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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28774374">Gone for Good</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/definitelynottraumatized/pseuds/definitelynottraumatized'>definitelynottraumatized</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Simon Snow &amp; Related Fandoms, simon snow - Fandom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, Mentioned Agatha Wellbelove, Multi, Simon Snow Is Bad at Feelings, Simon Snow Loves Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch, Simon Snow is Gay for Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch, Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch Is Gay for Simon Snow, Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch Loves Simon Snow, everything about this is gay, i’m a lonely homosexual</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-05-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 06:28:31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>26,929</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28774374</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/definitelynottraumatized/pseuds/definitelynottraumatized</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Just racing Gemma T. Leslie to July 6 (not with smut you horny bastards)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Penelope Bunce &amp; Simon Snow, Penelope Bunce &amp; Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch, Penelope Bunce/Shepard, Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Simon<br/>
A list of things I am sure Basilton Grimm Pitch will hate about me when he wakes up:<br/>
1. I spend all his money on food<br/>
2. I spend all my money on food<br/>
3. I spend the money I don’t spend on food on clothes you’d find near the register of a petrol station<br/>
4. Morning breath (He never says anything, but I’m all rumpled in the morning. He looks like Snow White.)<br/>
5. Thinking about nothing instead of everything<br/>
6. Agatha dated me<br/>
7. I dated Agatha<br/>
8. Penelope Bunce is my unsecret favorite<br/>
9. I let him sleep during the day<br/>
10. I let him sleep in the sun<br/>
11. I let him sleep at all...<br/>
There’s probably more. I’m trying not to think too much. He’s sound asleep in a field of flowers, and the grass is churning peacefully around him. He’s as beautiful as Harry Styles. Prettier, if we’re calling boys pretty. But not in a handsome way. He’s pretty. Not in a girly way either. Crowley. He’s prettier than the bloody person every bloke in the world wants. He looks smashing, with his right hand tangled in his own hair and his lips stuck together. In the shade of a tree I don’t know the name of.<br/>
Being beautiful and plenty manly and perfect in every instance.<br/>
We were supposed to find the cottage (I supposed you’d call it, out in the middle of nowhere in wilderness and chickens, a cottage.Baz’s manor out here would be a cottage.) where the Mage lived. My father lived. Where my mother died. They had chickens.<br/>
We were supposed to find it, but I got tired. And he wanted me to rest for a minute because I’m getting a nervous twitch in my wings. A flutter, sort of.<br/>
And then he fell asleep. Something is bothering him but I don’t know what. I can never figure out what he needs. How he feels. He shouldn’t have to worry about me and how I feel. I can’t let him walk away. Not since last time.<br/>
But I’m Simon Snow. The Chosen One who wasn’t ever really Chosen. I do things because they make sense to someone else. I’d let him walk away. Watch him sway, hair wound around his fingers, violin slung around his shoulders, pressed collar and audaciously printed, well-tailored suits. Go, be a peripatetic vampire. Be free.<br/>
It doesn’t matter. No matter how many times someone reassures you, sometimes you need to be reassured every day. All the fucking time.<br/>
I’d have something wrong with me, too. Penny is always saying I don’t need to love every bit of me to be in a relationship. That I can have been in two relationships and find the best bloody thing to happen to me without needing fifty. That as long as I’m myself, it’s silly to worry about being my best self. That she loves me even though her addiction to tea drives her mental and her feet are too small (Doc Martens don’t make them look small. She looks like a monster truck if a monster truck were human.).<br/>
It’s a lot easier to be alive when someone is awake. I mean, I shared a room with Baz for ages and I never slept without the disquieting fear he would strike me in the night, ignoring the Anathema because what does it matter when you’re a vampire and you’re gonna be expelled from the World of Mages anyway. Penny doesn’t sleep ever anymore so she doesn’t count either.<br/>
I can see faeries tumbling around the edge of a tree stump. The clouds moving… which way did Baz say they were? West East. I can’t remember now.<br/>
If the faeries are out, what’s going to happen to me? I won’t get captured by fucking numpties, that I can promise. Careful not to nudge Baz with my wings (which I realise were unintentionally inverted around his frame, casting a shadow over every bit of him) I stand.<br/>
The heavy sound of air bouncing on and from my wings hangs heavy in the air, and for a moment I expect Baz to wake up and chuck his left shoe at me. He doesn’t. He doesn’t move. Hypersenses who cares. It’s cooler higher up, and it’s warmer higher up. The air stings but my body feels like it’s radiating and burning. It’s too warm.<br/>
There’s nothing here. No bears. No skunks. No silver-tongued garden snakes. But I can see Baz. Just Baz and the sunlight and the trees and the grass.<br/>
Baz doesn’t seem to mind when he wakes up and I’m not there. Like he’s expecting it. Like he doesn’t want to fight me. Like he doesn’t care if I go. I’m sure he’ll be fine.<br/>
The grass smells like America did; it’s sun-baked and soaked in some sort of dirt/dead leaves mix that makes me dizzy. If I decided to lay in the grass I wouldn’t look as good as Baz did. Tracings of pink against grey, a drop in an ocean of green. Sometimes I wonder if he’s the one living in a world he doesn’t belong to, or if I am.<br/>
There is still nothing here. Dead ends everywhere. Dead ends at Watford, dead ends at Penny’s home, dead things in Baz’s house.<br/>
He was being a bloody idiot that day, giggling and flaunting a disgusting (and rather leather-scented) pixie skin lamp like a tail, challenging me to a duel. Twisting his entire body into a smile when my tail wound around his wrist. Laughing at me when my wings started to flap because he hooked my little finger with his own. Rain was thundering around us and I could almost feel his heartbeat.<br/>
Dusk carries in a new way, a whispering change of scenery. The sky looks like an inferno but it’s a liar. Snow painted orange. It makes me shudder and my wings twitch. Baz is probably so cold. He’s always so cold. I miss...</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Bloody Snow.  The only bloke in the whole world who would leave his vampire boyfriend alone in a fucking forest in the sunlight. My skin feels taut, like the skins of a drum. I look down at my hands and groan. They look like the rocks I would dig with Fiona, milky grey with dark smudges. Rough and wrong. The rejected rocks that bury themselves in the ground. <br/>    What I should really do is hunt. Lamb told me I could control it. Practically stop being a vampire. To stop being like the animals I drink from… it sounds like a dream. Lamb lied to me, lied to Snow, he pulled us until we stood out on that beach shattered.  I know he lied, I know he didn’t break me and Snow. Hell, he probably helped us yell at each other until we were stuck back together. God save Simon Snow.  He ignored Penny completely until he said what he was afraid of. She kept tugging at his sleeve, swatting his tail, snapping her fingers, casting spells (the boy has had so much magic directed at him, he seems almost immune).  He just shouted at me, pushed me square in the chest, lit me on fire with his glance shrunk me with his breath. There was nothing else for me to do but stand there. I am not particularly fond of crying; I couldn’t cry when he got shot, not when my mother torched herself, not when Fiona came in like a hurricane to rescue me from the numpties, not when Penny purposefully broke my leg while I was fixing Shep’s truck by dropping a tire on it to see if it would realign correctly to fix when it hadn’t (It didn’t. It just fucking hurt.). <br/>    Snow pushed me in the chest and I started to cry. Sniveling, unattractive, lost-my-handkerchief crying. Bunce just watched. She has no lack of curiosity to the point of shame. I let him push me until he couldn’t yell anymore. You’re the top of your fucking class Baz learn to be happy without me!<br/>    If it were just that easy. But it isn’t.  I kept repeating that I was happy with him, I called him Simon. He just looked at me. Disgusted. Broken. Furious. Penny had given up protesting, Snow had stopped railing against me. He stood like he was praying to the ocean for Venus to rise from the foam in that moment. I tried to tip his chin softly, but he wouldn’t look at me. <br/>Look at me. I’m not leaving until you tell me to. Leave!  <br/>If getting staked in the heart hurt even a centimetre of this, I would have taken it like a noble chap. Like it was an honor from the bloody queen herself.  Bunce tried to say something, but he told her everyone leaves her, so she had to leave him sometime because she always learned well by example. He might have slashed her deeper than he had me. Her chin trembled and she whipped back in her own footprints.  I stood like a statue, like I really was frozen by the sun (I wasn’t, it was a thickly overcast morning).  Snow didn’t seem phased. He started to fly. I really thought he was leaving us for ourselves. Denouncing the World of Mages and starting a new life with Lamb so they could asexually reproduce and have fifteen little  winged vampire magicks. <br/>Shepherd was the only one talking on our way to Chicago.  Bunce has decided we needed a place with a big population and a good history, to make sure we were safe. NowNext would have a hard time attacking us with generations of American history and flocks of Normals. <br/>We didn’t see Snow until Chicago. He was curled next to an urn filled with extinguished fags and envirnmentally unsafe plastic wrappers. Alone. He still wouldn’t meet my eyes. He and Bunce exchanged words before I would talk to him. His best friend. He doesn’t get to do that. <br/>You can leave me here.  Simon, you fucking wretch, I wouldn’t be happy anywhere without you. Baz… Simon… Don’t go. <br/>Don’t go. That was all I needed. <br/>All he has to do is look at me and I’d stop the universe from expanding. I’d do anything to keep him here with me. I stood holding him. Shepherd was whispering something to Bunce, probably about how fucked up our relationship is. It wasn’t perfect and it wasn’t fixed. But it was us, and in that moment I wasn’t going to lose him. It was a start.   He held me again after that. He wouldn’t kiss me, but he held my hand again, all the time. The same way it was right after he killed the Mage.  I’m wrenched from the memory when he lands sloppily and tumbles onto my chest.<br/>Simon<br/>I need to work on landing, probably, but it feels so good when I’m up in the air.  Penny was watching an actor on the phone talk about how it doesn’t hurt when he falls and he’s acting. I’m free from my body when I’m flying. I’m not me. I’d just something in the air. Baz is plenty pissed off. He pushes me, and I push him back.  He’s genuinely worried looking. I am, too, but I hope he can’t tell. The second I hit the ground everything comes back hard. He had such a nice time out with Lamb. Flirting and being lighthearted. I can’t blame him, really. I can’t think of anyone who would pick loving me over someone else. I’m an orphan, a depressed traumatized man who feels far safer at home on the couch with a cherry scone than a drink and a black and white get-together. He could go out with Lamb without having to worry about how I am. He could be selfish with Lamb. And Lamb would be selfish, too. They could figure out a way to use their love as a mage-vampire and save NowNext the entire process. Bloody Lamb. <br/>He hurt Baz. And since Baz ate out with him that day, he seems too far away. <br/>I want to hold him all the time now. I try not to. I almost never reach for him. But he does, he protects my palm with his hand and skates his thumb over my first finger. I love when I can keep him warm. <br/>Our life with Penny was so nice. It was so good when he’d saunter in dressed like Prince Harry and Penny would spell my wings away, hug me tight, and promise we’d finish watching whatever documentary we were watching. I just liked sitting with her. I couldn’t care less about whether Shelly was dead.  <br/>“Where did you go?”<br/>“I was just getting restless.”<br/>“So you left me in the sun in a forest where we think a massive good magic drain exists.” He shoves me further away. <br/>I push him back. “You were asleep!”<br/>“I’m sunburned and more exhausted now than I was when we got here!”<br/>I don’t want him to think I hate him. He’s pretty angry. I press my hand against his chest and look him levelly in his eyes. He looks wild.  Like a real vampire. He’s breathless and thick-lipped and his hair is getting so long it flips in waves at the bottoms.  “Stop.” It’s a command that usually works, at least to get Baz to take a step back. <br/>Baz freezes like I just put a spell on him. His head falls so far back that his Adam’s apple juts out and I can see the pale remains of a bite scar. <br/>“Simon,” he whispers, gaunt and wrong looking, “you just spelled me.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He hasn’t been hunting since we got back from America, and that was at least a day ago. He has to be delusional. <br/>“Baz—”<br/>“I know what magic feels like, Snow.”<br/>“Did it feel like my magic?”<br/>“No. I didn’t feel like I was being turned inside out and the life was being sucked from my cells.”<br/>“What could it be then?” I shout, raising my hands in exasperation. He shouldn’t have led me to hope in the first place. <br/>“I don’t know, Snow! Let me think!”<br/>“This involves me, too. Think out loud or pretend it didn’t happen.”<br/>“Crowley, Snow, give me a minute to figure this out.”<br/>“What did it feel like?”<br/>“Like magic.”<br/>“You sound like Penny. Baz, what did it feel like?”<br/>“I just told you.  I don’t know what magic feels like.”<br/>“You do know,” I knock my knuckles on his collarbone. “You are magic!”<br/>“Merlin and Morgana, Snow. It doesn’t mean I can magically hold every word I need in my hands.”<br/>“You can hold fire and you’re a fucking vampire. Try.”<br/>Baz<br/>I feel like a prick, I know I’m acting like it. It’s been nearly a year, and we are maddeningly close to where we started. Nowhere and nothing. <br/>“It feels burning and stinging. Like something is crawling up my arm and eating my skin.”<br/>“Aha! I knew it!” He’s so excited that his arms and wings both start flapping, and he springs to his feet. I know that look in his eye.  I fell in love with that look. Simon Snow looks like he’s about to go off. <br/>Simon<br/>“Penny said that my magic felt like being shocked.”<br/>“I’m so very glad for you. I agree with Bunce. Other comparisons include tsunami of bees, being digested in a dragon’s stomach in reverse, and merwolf flirting. Frankly, I find it shocking that you’re still arguing with me.”<br/>Simon nudges me with the edge of his cheap trainers, the sole—which is beginning to peel— moves slightly out of time with his motions. “It’s not my magic, Baz! My magic is gone! Gone, gone, gone, gone. My magic was supposed to feel like being electrocuted are you electrocuted no and it doesn’t it doesn’t feel like that for you it isn’t my magic. Bloody hell, Baz, you want me to be in the World of Mages. I don’t belong there! Here… wherever! I’m not magickal I never was supposed to be!” He grins triumphantly at me. He’s so proud to be arguing about his lack of magic. Snow, if you knew what you could do to me with a smile, you wouldn’t be arguing like this. <br/>Fighting is better than nothing. <br/>Simon<br/>Kissing Baz is nicer than fighting with him, but I’ll settle for being in the same room as him. Not that you can count this as a room…  <br/>He isn’t looking at me like he wants to kiss me. His face is disgusted and sour.  If he wants to kiss me with that face he’s wearing it’s because I’ve suddenly morphed into a troll.  He definitely wouldn’t want to kiss me right now. Besides, I don’t think that I would let him. It feels all wrong. It’s better. I can look at him without imagining everything ending and a dead zone in my heart when I’m supposed to be loving him. I haven’t told him that. I can’t love him, anyway. It’s only been a few months. I told Agatha on our year anniversary, at the edge of the riverbank at a silver table. (The merwolves stopped being afraid for long enough to take Agatha’s hair pin, which had been her grandmother’s, and which she never saw again. She didn’t talk to me for a week and a half. It wasn’t as lovely as I had promised it would end up being.). I told her because you’re supposed to love them if you’ve been with them for a year. Has Baz ever told someone he loves them? <br/>Could he love Lamb? He’d be more happy that way. <br/>His eyes find mine, but quickly look for something else. I’m hurt, but I can’t blame him. What better place to be distracted in than a rolling expanse of nature (or whatever this is; forest, open field, woods)? <br/>“Snow,” he starts quietly.<br/>I can’t let him finish.  “Baz, you look like shit. You should hunt.”<br/>“You look like a gorgon.”<br/>I shrug. “You do.”  <br/>Baz<br/>The passion has dulled. He’s back to Simon Snow, Chosen One Fake News, Carrier of Nineteen Years of Emotional Baggage and The Whole World Promising Him He Was Never Special. He shrugs at me, for what is probably the seventeen hundred millionth time. That’s not even a number.<br/>“I’m not going hunting, Snow. And we’ll talk about how you cast a spell on me later, with Bunce if you’d like.”<br/>Simon smiles smugly. “Penny will agree with me.”<br/>“Good, then you can cast a spell on her.”<br/>“I can’t cast spells, Baz!”<br/>“You cast a spell on me!”<br/>“It’s like saying Shep can cast spells,” he answers fervently. He can’t let anything go, but I have to snap back at him. <br/>“Shepherd is a Normal,” I answer, and exasperation and hunger bleed through my bloodless vampire lips. <br/>“A cursed Normal,” he insists, “If you’re saying I can do it, and I have no magic and dragon wings. So if I can do it because part of my body is magic, Shep can do it because he carries a curse.”<br/>I know I’m glaring at him in frustration, but he is probably the only person around whom I fail to control my tongue. “That’s not how it works, Snow!”<br/>Snow shrugs. The only bloke in the whole world who can shrug passive aggressively. <br/>I didn’t miss the fights. I missed them when they were all I had, but now they’re petty and useless. Time we could be arguing like an old married couple, spent arguing like children with him flapping his arms and repeating his words. Sometimes I feel like I’m back at Watford and all he’ll ever do is despise me. It’s easy to forget he doesn’t. <br/>“Fine, we’ll have it out with Bunce when we get back.”<br/>A concerned flash passes over Snow’s face. “Have you checked your phone?”<br/>“No.”<br/>“Check it,” he urges. He’s always intensely concerned for her. Does he worry about me that way?<br/>“There’s nothing here, Snow.”<br/>“What?” He’s alarmed.<br/>“On the phone. Bunce hasn’t texted us, or called us, or tracked us, or sent smoke signals, or summoned out a search party, or cajoled a dragon into helping her roast us.”<br/>He furrows his brow and bites the right side of his lip, which makes him look like a malformed centaur. <br/>“Did you find anything on your flight of fancy?”<br/>He sideyes me in a pissed off way. “Don’t call it that.”<br/>Sorry,” I say. And I do mean it. The last thing I would ever do is hurt Simon Snow.  I know he wouldn’t believe that if I got it tattooed on my arse, but I can pretend he knows. Feign reassurance.  I’m pretending about most things, lately. <br/>“I didn’t see anything. It’s like there’s nothing in this place. No squirrels. No birds, no bears.”<br/>I raise an eyebrow. “Nothing?”<br/>“Baz, have you even seen a moth? No. It must be a dead zone.  The Humdrum must have known this is where I was born and come back here and killed everything.”<br/>“I don’t think that’s how it works.”<br/>“Crowly, would you stop making me feel like a fucking idiot? I’m not dumb all the time.”<br/>“You aren’t dumb,” I tell him softly, “You’re Simon bloody Snow. You’re brilliant. You defeated the Humdrum.”<br/>He shrugs, each syllable terse. “Not that hard when you realize all you had to do was kill yourself, basically.”<br/>“That’s not what you did. It was courageous. I was just saying if that were true, the Mage would have drained the life from every living thing at Watford when he… packed you with all the magic he wished he had.”<br/>Snow’s face changes when I mention the Mage. Right then, I decide we are going to drop the topic for a while. For an hour, at least, until Bunce calls us frantically while we’re attempting to sneak past a sleeping and carnivorous rabbit or attemps to seance our souls from our bodies. <br/>“I don’t like this, Baz,” he mutters.<br/>“I don’t like it either.”<br/>Simon<br/>He stretches his left hand, his violin hand, to meet me, his thin fingers flexible and safe. I can’t make myself pull him toward me, and that’s what I want now, desperately, more than anything. To be held and somehow prove everything is going to be fine.  He isn’t deterred, though.  He hasn’t given up when I stand and stare at him. It makes me feel like we’re first years, but it’s always been a smashing quality on him. He becomes more and more impatient until eventually someone fights back. I don’t. I don’t want to fight him, and I don’t really want to have to fight for him now. I just want to have him. <br/>At least I have his hand, and his familiar thumb on the edge of my finger. <br/>“Okay?” He asks.<br/>I don’t nod or shake my head. They don’t tell you that when you love someone, the real terror isn’t any fight you have. It’s not knowing if they’ll want you, the way you are, forever. It’s the sickening hope that they’ll hold on to you.<br/>Baz is never the impulsive one. He’s the one who melts when I fingerprint up his arm. But I can’t bring myself to touch him and I’m too selfish to let him go.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I don’t wanna be annoying with notes. I’m also a really social... ya know.... limp-wristed tranny. It’s not bad if I call myself it. Uh. I’m sorry. My favourite song is Miss Me by Frank Iero. I’m fake British. How is anyone? I’m so sorry I am not gonna leave anymore notes ahhh</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Baz<br/>He goes with me. Holding my hand. <br/>I don’t discern whether the ache in my stomach is from clutching his hand for what could be the last time or the closeness of his body to my own without him fighting me. <br/>“I saw faeires.”<br/>“You just said there was no life.”<br/>“No. Right when I started.”<br/>I sneer. “Near me?”<br/>Snow shrugs. <br/>“Why do they flock me?” Everywhere I go I can see faeries. It has to be me. They can’t possibly be everywhere I am. <br/>Simon knocks our laced hands on my hip, and I look to the side.<br/>“What,” he asks.<br/>“Nothing,”<br/>“Baz.”<br/>“Snow.”<br/>“What is it?”<br/>“Faeries don’t come out in the day.”<br/>“Pixies do.”<br/>“Faeries don’t, Snow.”<br/>“So?” He shrugs. <br/>“We’re in the right place.”<br/>Snow looks at me. Really looks at me, the way he used to, eyes like fire and lips sketched in a sort of stormy contemplation.<br/>“I think it’s gone,” he murmurs.<br/>“Snow, I can spell you back to Penny.”<br/>He lets go of my hand and starts to run. <br/>========<br/>The cabin smells the way I would expect it to.  Just like the nursery did when I found my way inside.  Down to the smell. Damp, mouldy, and smoky. Simon used to smell like that, the way a fire smells when a log falls against the bottom grate and the smoke drifts sideways instead of up. <br/>It sounds like rotted wood.  Precarious and tired. We can see because of the fire in my palm, but it’s empty. Completely empty. I expected that the Mage wouldn’t care enough after Lucy died. I’d waltz in with Snow.  We’d have a very gay old time, and appreciate the unmade bed and copper kettle on the stove. There is nothing here. Not curtains made from old clothes, not a sack of chicken feed, not sage and apples because a legend somewhere says they protect against evil. Charred and dark. Probably the way Snow describes me to people. Oh yeah, I’ve got a boyfriend. He’s not a bloke you can glow when talking about, yeah? More of the charred and dark type. Perfect for sadistic rituals and leaving with an agonizing pace. <br/>“I killed him.” He whirls on me. We’ve been silent since he let go of my hand. <br/>Simon<br/>He didn’t call after me. He didn’t grab for my hand. He didn’t react. <br/>He let me go and run. <br/>“You didn’t kill him, Simon.”<br/>“I told him to stop.”<br/>“You asked him to stop,” he corrects.<br/>Baz<br/>“Fuck off.”<br/>“Simon, you didn’t kill him. You’re not a murderer,” Yet another time I have defended Simon Snow to himself when I could tear him down. My mother would be watching mortified. She would have burned me a long time ago. Perhaps she would take Snow in as her own, and we wouldn’t be a part of this mess at all. Oh, Simon, I will give you a middle name and love you like the vermin son I had to kill. Have another scone. <br/>He doesn’t eat right anymore. Only sporadically. Erratic eating. Bizarre times. Binges of food and then he doesn’t want to move. <br/>“I didn’t have a choice, right, Baz?”<br/>“You didn’t!”<br/>“Poor Simon Snow, he just goes wherever he has to. Fights whatever he wants,” he meets my eyes. Like he’s about to set me on fire.  “He never chooses anything. What a fucking idiot, he never thinks.  I just sit around and pity my boyfriend. Poor Simon, he had to kill his own—“<br/>I put my left hand over his mouth and hold his left wrist with my right. Merlin and Morgana, I never thought I’d end up killing him like this. He’s maddening, intensely so. “Stop!”<br/>His eyes tear and his breath hitches.  He’s panicking. Snow pushes at me so I should go backwards, but he isn’t trying really.  He drops on the floor in a rush of wings and tail.<br/>I kneel and surround him best I can with my arms. “Simon.”<br/>Snow doesn’t say anything. Just stares at me all wounded and panicked. He growls after a moment. <br/>I just keep him against me. <br/>“Simon, you—“<br/>“Baz, don’t.”<br/>“Simon.”<br/>“Baz!” <br/>“You might feel better if we talk.”<br/>“S’stupid.”<br/>“So you have nothing to say.”<br/>He squirms in my arms. “Stop trying to make me talk.”<br/>“Stop pushing me away.”<br/>“Are you serious? Baz, I—“<br/>And of course, in that moment, Shepherd appears out of nowhere with Bunce. <br/>Penny beams. “You owe me a fiver.”</p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Simon<br/>Penny startled me when she popped up from absolutely nowhere. I leaned into Baz. She isn’t going to say anything, and I hope to everyone behind the veil that Shep knows better. That he knows Penny will turn him into a pansy.  <br/>“Hello, gentlemen.”<br/>“Baz checked you didn’t text us.”<br/>“I know.” She smiles reassuringly and plops down near me, handing me a Malteaser from her pocket. <br/>Sweet things help. My therapist said to try Sour Patch Kids, to chew them slowly and feel grounded. But they were so disgusting. It was the same taste I imagine when I think about kissing Agatha now. <br/>That was mean. She just wears such aberration from her sunshiney self, the pleasant and gentle Agatha I knew. This is acidic, like my pathetic abhorrent face makes her sting. Every time she does that I feel like a bounder. She was the one with Baz in the forest. <br/>Fucking Baz. <br/>He did what I wanted him to, though. He didn’t need to ask. <br/>Like he’s had panic attacks before. <br/>Maybe he has. <br/>I’m chewing the Malteaser slowly and carefully. I bit my lip the other day and now I bite on the bump. I imagine having a ring in my lip would feel similarly. That’s adding to my caution. More than anything I want to collapse against Baz’s dead chest and pretend we live there. Pretend like I can fall to sleep on his lungs and breathe until everything knits itself back into neat rows. I reach instead out to her and she hefts me on up onto my legs. Baz stares from the floor. I spent seven years studying his face, seven years in fear and hope and loathing and what I think was want, and a flit to his face makes me illiterate. <br/>I smile at Shep. He grins back. “Hey, Simon.”<br/>That’s something he’s good at. He can’t keep his mouth shut even if the Queen asked him to, but he handles odd situations with a good nature. <br/>All I want is him. Baz, that is. Shep is a handsome bloke, but I think he fancies Penny for some reason. He’s much more interesting to listen to and to look at than Micah was. I don’t remember him that well anymore. Shep has cooler arms. But Baz. I just want to settle somewhere with him. I don’t care if it’s a tent or an ostrich shell. Just to hide him away from the world so he doesn’t have to deal with me losing my shit every second. <br/>He didn’t do anything wrong. He was probably right to stop me. Sometimes Penny actually spells me to shut up with Shakespeare. Not a sonnet. Those are hard. Baz can’t do them. <br/>Fucking Morgana, I love him. <br/>I wasn’t intending to turn to Baz and offer a hand.  I really wanted to. So bad. I wanted to so much (so so much.). I put my hand out for another Malteaser from Penny instead. Her face always betrays her heart. <br/>“Simon’s coming with me, because he and I need to figure something out.”<br/>“Yeah,” Shep interjects, “I’m hopeless.  I can’t read things written in British.” He raises both eyebrows at the same time in a flirty coy sort of way. Baz rolls his eyes with his mouth twisted.  <br/>“You’re stuck with me, Baz.”<br/>Baz is pissed. But he doesn’t hassle Penny. With her ring hand she interlocks only our pinkie fingers, and somehow we’re whisked away. It’s dizzying; the Malteasers aren’t going to last for much longer like this. <br/>“Penny, what?”<br/>Simultaneously she wiggles her fingers and eyebrows. Just trying out some black magic objects I found in the Mage’s old office.<br/>“Penny!”<br/>“Yes, Simon?”<br/>“What were you doing in the Mage’s office?”<br/>“Trying out some dark magic objects. Shepherd and I really were trying to see if he could get more cursed. I mean, I don’t think you get more cursed than he is, but it is certainly worth a go around.”<br/>“You’re not holding anything.” I’m so confused.<br/>Penny laughs easily, like she didn’t find her recently homosexual winged best friend writhing in his vampire boyfriend’s arms, struggling to inhale because of a panic attack.  In the home of his dead parents where they agreed to have sex with black magic so that they can together birth an absolute void of goodness and light. Just business as usual, I suppose it is. Stand up chaps, my boyfriend and me are. <br/>My boyfriend. Damn it all.<br/>“Simon, hey.”<br/>“I thought you needed me.”<br/>Penny’s eyes dart toward me. It’s impossible for me to tell between exasperation and maternal chiding. Does Penny even have any maternal in her? Do I? Baz probably does, fucking wanker. He charms everyone he meets. Lamb sure liked being with him. He almost didn’t even wanna kill him. Oh Baz, you’d make a pretty corpse. Oh, wait, you already are a corpse. I guess husband will do. <br/>The thought makes me shudder. Penny’s palms are sweaty but she’s comforting nonetheless with her hand over my wrist. It’s supposed to be a pulse point, where you can stay warm better.  I like when she does that. <br/>“I’ll always need you, Simon.”<br/>I frown.  Not to travel anymore.”<br/>“Fuck me.  Simon, of course I need you. I love you. I just wanted to know what this stuff does.” She whirls her wrist to a small stud where the nose ring she got (In her septum. When she was afraid to go see Micah. On a whim. Her mother didn’t notice. She still hasn’t. We’re keeping track. In Penny’s mum’s defense, Penny forgets a lot, too. She ripped it out just the other day when she sneezed too many times and had to wipe her nose with her sleeve.) should be.<br/>I groan and lay my eyes to rest against my fingertips. “Penny, you didn’t.”<br/>“It’s clean.”<br/>“Who says?”<br/>“It’s not rusted and I spelled a quick ‘out damn spot’ on it.”<br/>“Penny!”<br/>“Simon!”<br/>“You could be inhaling evil magic powder.”<br/>“Nope. Just a wicked way to travel.”<br/>“Ugh,” I’m thoroughly disgusted. She could have put it in her ear “You could have put it in your ear!”<br/>“Tried it. Didn’t work. Probably would have worked if I had a navel piercing.”<br/>“Ew.”<br/>Penny giggles.  I’m toppling emotionally; I snort.  <br/>“You didn’t even mean to come there. And you showed up the exact moment I needed you.”<br/>“You have Baz,” she tries. I won’t let her glasses into my frame of view. “Besides,” she adds, “he has Sheperd. He wouldn’t dare try anything with Basilton around.”<br/>“I think he’s more afraid of you.”<br/>“Baz or Shepherd?” <br/>I side-eye her for that comment. But Penny’s brilliantly clever, so she drops the conversation.  Mostly.  <br/>“Are you sure you’re okay, Simon?”<br/>“Fine. Did you find anything?”<br/>“No. Did you?” <br/>“Not so far. Baz and I… we just got there.”<br/>Penny sighs. “Damn.”</p>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Why did I tell myself every day I’d post</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Baz<br/>“What exactly are we looking for?”<br/>Shepherd is probably the worst at silence.  Worse than Snow, who was absolutely shit at keeping his mouth closed. Ever. I gave up and told Snow eventually. Hoping it won’t go down that same road (Yes, Shepherd, I am a vampire.  Please kiss me.  I’m pathetic.). <br/>I’m practically stroking the flame in the palm of my hand. It bounces easily with each step, tumbling from one finger to the opposite hand and back toward the edge of my wrist. Centre of my palm, against my pulse, seesawing on my thumbnail. Back forth back forth. <br/>“Who lived here, again? Penny tried to clue me in but now I’m more confused than ever.  You can smell things, right? Do you smell anything? I mean, it’s definitely mould city in here but can you smell something more than that? It’s strangely clean in here. I was expecting way more dust. I mean, what, twenty years? I was two when you guys were born. That’s crazy to think about.  Crazy. And I had no clue all of this was going on. I mean, I had my own crazy shit going on but—“ Shep shakes his head, “it’s crazy.”<br/>I am working my hardest to ignore him completely. It’s not difficult, but it is at the same time, because I want to snap at him.  I can remember when Snow would do that, just run his mouth.  He was like flint, and everything will end in flames the second he and I clash. <br/>We’re supposed to find anything. Penny’s mum hasn’t yet figured out we found the keys to the Mage’s end of the tower. After Simon demolished the Humdrum, a the Old Families and the Mage’s men held a strange sort of council in which it was mutually agreed that the Mage’s office and room were to be locked. <br/>It isn’t right.  That they are working to curtain the history of Watford. Of Simon. Of all of us. It was the worst fucking thing to happen, but it was the thing that brought us together in the end. And now we need to figure it out. Because no one wants to. <br/>The World of Mages is falling apart. Magic isn’t supposed to have a half-life.  And yet, artifacts and entire structures are dissolving. Disintegrating. Turning to ash without mourners and a dusty ocean carrying dead roses. <br/>There isn’t a pattern.  We can’t track, we can’t connect. It doesn’t make sense. Places where the Humdrum was (not Simon, although those places, too. He went off because of the Humdrum, but the Humdrum existed because he went off; it gives me a pulsing in my forehead). Those, some of them, houses disappear. Buildings, schools, plants, pants, clothes (And apparently my ability to talk without rhyming like Mickey Mouse). <br/>There should be a connection. There should be something. <br/>Dead spots maybe. Not everywhere. The world shouldn’t be falling apart. <br/>Crowley. All I want is Simon in my world. I don’t care about anything else. <br/>Agatha<br/>Simon is being silly. It’s been three days and he won’t let go of Baz. He won’t let my father check his wings. <br/>I went out with him for years and I can’t understand what’s wrong. <br/>Mum is flighty, as usual, but far more… breathily present.  She isn’t all that fond of Lucy, and she’s taken away my phone (Dad snapped after the thirty fourth call from Ginger.  She really believed she was doing the right thing, it really isn’t her fault.)<br/>I haven’t seen the rest of them for days now.  The older one was beautiful, his arms were muscular and adorned with the most intriguing tattoos. <br/>I took a flight before Penny and Simon. I don’t think I’d last more than an hour with the two of them, one on either side, Simon’s wings caught in my hair. <br/>I went out with a gay man... I went out with a little boy. <br/>I went out with the most evil thing ever to be encountered by Mages or humanity. <br/>I went out with a boy with dragon wings. <br/>I went out with a monster.</p>
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<a name="section0007"><h2>7. I’m Too Depressed for This please send gay help</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Simon<br/>He’s back. <br/>God he’s magnificent. <br/>He dances over to me (He’s only walking, it just looks like a dance, the way every step looks easy and every sweep of his eyes planned.) and extends an arm, his fingers so close to mine. <br/>I take his hand this time. <br/>Penny has been having a fine time for herself, really truly fabulous. She found a flask filled with poison, just like you’d read about in the stories, and a box of tarnished silver beads that hum like bees do and heat up very hot, and a belt that tried to strangle her (I’m good with a blade, and I had a dagger from the wall on my lap. It made sense to slash her out of it at the time.  Her shirt’s ripped now and part of it won’t unknot from her belt loop…)<br/>Baz smiles graciously like the queen at her. You can barely tell he’s giving her the once-over. “You look astounding, Bunce.”<br/>She catches him in the shoulder with the lanced end of the belt. He laughs easily. <br/>Everything looks easy when Baz is doing it. <br/>“What are you thinking, Snow?” He asks it beautifully low while Shep hands Penny (I shit you not) a toilet seat. <br/>“Why do you have a toilet seat?” I wouldn’t believe me, either. A toilet seat. <br/>Baz cackles. “It was the only thing to sit on, and Shepherd insisted that he sit to get a rock from his shoe, and he happened to be in the bathroom.”<br/>I look at him uncomprehending and he tilts his head close to mine without us touching. I can feel his breath (likely the only warm part of him) rustle against my eyelashes. <br/>“He got stuck.”<br/>“On purpose?”<br/>“It was spelled, Snow.”<br/>“Oh.”<br/>I can’t think of anything to say. <br/>“I got it off,” Baz adds (with a snooty sort of smirk, though there are about a thousand reasons I can find that he’d do that), “And I thought it was worth studying. Shepherd did not.”<br/>“Thanks,” I say. He explained the whole thing. What am I supposed to say? <br/>He squeezes my hand. “Mhmm.”<br/>Penny and Shepherd are arguing. Phrases like ‘what the bloody hell’ and ‘shut the fuck up’ fly. It’s overwhelming. <br/>I didn’t used to get overwhelmed this way. My face feels hot and my feet are tingling. Penny is so similar to her mum sometimes. The cluelessness. <br/>Baz <br/>Snow’d got that frosted over glaze in his eyes. He looks like November. <br/>“Hey.”<br/>“Hi.”<br/>“Are you okay?”<br/>He shrugs. <br/>“C’mon. We’ll go to the kitchen. I still possess the keys of Cook Pritchard,” I say, flourishing my hand (overdramatically).<br/>I’m trying to be more patient. Things aren’t perfect since America, but we have found a sort of beat to march to. A sort of dysfunctional temporary thing. A rental car relationship. I’d die for that boy, though.  I wouldn’t think twice. I wouldn’t be myself without him. I wouldn’t be here without him. The fire and the forest and the flames and the boy I have always loved (Insert jokes about licking Snow instead of licking flames. Insert joke about the word insert.). I’m not gonna let him drown. I’ll let him burn, but only with me.</p>
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<a name="section0008"><h2>8. 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Baz<br/>We head out quietly in that same way Baz has always been so good at. The quiet reign of his presence anywhere is remarkable. It’s warmer knowing he’s here.<br/>“How do you still have the keys?”<br/>“I’m friends with Cook Pritchard.”<br/>“Still?”<br/>I wink without turning his head to look into my face. “It’s easy to get someone’s keys copied.”<br/>“Baz!” He never used to call me by my name (when we were mortal enemies). He says it so much now. Every other sentence. (It would be funny if he called me Tyrannus Basilton Grimm Pitch every time, though. I might like it enough not to kill him. I hate being called Tyrannus. Tyrant. Jesus.)<br/>I shrug at him in my best nonchalant way. “If you don’t go into every situation guns blazing it’s easy to get away with shit.”<br/>“I don’t do that,” he says. <br/>“You don’t mean to.”<br/>“Hey!”<br/>“Don’t shoot the messenger.  Or mow him down.”<br/>“Baz!”<br/>“Yes?”<br/>“I’m gonna mow you down in a minute.”<br/>It makes me laugh more. “I’d just knit myself together.”<br/>“You don’t know that,” his nose is crinkled. His protest expression. Lips apart. Nose crinkled. Bottom lip pouting. Eyes wide. His whole face somehow appears open when he should look like a raisin. How I would look if I attempted that face. (Truly, everything about Simon Snow is a phenomenon). <br/>“Who says, Snow, I haven’t decapitated myself in a misguided experimentation when I was nearly eleven and discovered I am in fact not vulnerable to the strengths of a guillotine.”<br/>“You did not.”<br/>“No, I didn’t. But it’s fun getting you to react.”<br/>Quiet.  I don’t want him to be afraid. Or uncomfortable.<br/>Simon<br/>I’m not used to this Watford. Torpid responses from birds and diluted words lost in echoing hallways. But it’s quiet. And it’s peaceful. <br/>I’m quite alright in the moment strolling toward the kitchen with Baz. <br/>I’m hungry, though. <br/>“I wish it were like this year round,” I say. <br/>“Like what? Morbidly depressing?”<br/>He’s morbidly exasperating. “No,” I answer, “Open. Year round.”<br/>“What for?  There’s not much here...anymore.”<br/>He’s right. In a strange morning he and Penny’s mum sat giggling about everything at Watford before the Mage. My dad. (Daddy??) Davey. <br/>Whatever. Before he took Watford over, there were plenty of ways for magicians to be teenaged and dumb. Shakespearian shows were alleged nightmares (Macbeth turned someone into an egg). The really exceptional artists could maeuver their characters on the surface, and sometimes bring them up, where the floated angelically (I guess they never really disappeared… that’s why the clouds seem so perfectly moulded sometimes.). They had a chamber chorus until they sang “Wrapped Around Your Finger” and conjured a small but mighty Charybdis and Scylla in the river.  And a math team. And a debate team (wands were eventually confiscated at the door.). And both a magickal garden (for potions and spells and summonings) with red red clay and a Normal garden (food). The catacombs were set up like a maze in the end of November. A Rubik’s cube club, which defies all wizardry (But was the favourite of everyone. That’s the real way to tell if someone’s been to Watford.) A secret club for people named Tyler. <br/>“Summer. So some of us don’t have to go… home. If we don’t want to.”<br/>Baz nods. “That’d be beautiful.  We wouldn’t have much to do, though. And I’d advise against swimming.”<br/>I feel frustrated, not at him.  I shrug at him.<br/>I don’t think he knows what to say now. <br/>Baz hands me the keys.<br/>“Carry on, Snow.”<br/>I bump him with my shoulder. His skin feels cool today. He still won’t hunt. Or doesn’t need to? <br/>Fucking Lamb. <br/>Seeing the tables askew from the doorway, facing them; I feel funny doing it. <br/>“I’m so hungry.”<br/>“Snow, I’d think you were an imposter if you suddenly didn’t snort food.”<br/>“I don’t snort.”<br/>“You do. Like cocaine.”<br/>I growl in his direction. Yes, his hand’s in mine. But it’s dark and I can’t quite figure out where his lips might be. “You do.”<br/>“I’m gonna thump you.”<br/>“You wouldn’t be able to catch me.”<br/>“Nuhuh.”<br/>“Yep,” he answers in a cool tone. <br/>And lets go of my hand. <br/>“Hey! Not fair!”<br/>“Snow, you did not just complain about the unfairness of your existence.”<br/>“You have vampire vision!”<br/>“Says who,” he asks.<br/>“You,” I say. <br/>“I also asserted that I have the remarkable ability of knitting my severed head back upon my neck.  Can’t believe everything, Snow.”<br/>I growl at him, wherever he is. <br/>It’s like playing It with my eyes closed. We did that when I was a kid, some home or another.<br/>“Fuck off.”<br/>“I can find you just fine.”<br/>“Vampire,” I say. <br/>He laughs. “Ollie ollie oxenfree.”<br/>I reach out and smash my hand on something. It makes me growl again.<br/>Baz is laughing. <br/>I follow the sound and smack my palm against icy smooth metal.<br/>“You found the fridge,” Baz affirms. <br/>Enough light casts out for me to see him for an instance. Then he disappears again. I’m thinking about how much I hate having a vampire boyfriend who thrives in darkness and steampunk when he catches me around the waist.<br/>I groan. Because he startled me. He probably can see perfectly when I stick my tongue out.  So quickly his thumb breezes over the mole on my cheek.<br/>“Gotcha.”</p>
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<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Whoops</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Baz<br/>I don’t have an idea of what I would do to Simon Snow in the dark. <br/>I don’t want to lick his tongue. Pinch his curls.  Twirl his waist.<br/>He really is the most beautiful boy. <br/>Snow’s breathing against my neck (mouth breather).<br/>“I scared you?” I ask.<br/>“A little,” he says. <br/>I want to pull him apart just to put him back together again the way he wants to be. <br/>“Right then,” I say, “let’s find a snack.”<br/>Penelope<br/>Shepherd makes fun of my lists. The only reason Simon and I have ever tracked anything was our lists. Between my mind (overthinking, intense curiosity) and Simon’s undercooked impulses (like reverse chicken, undercooked and raw but smoky and hot... not like that) we need the organization. We’d be visual learners if we took a test that tells us. Micah had to create an experiment like that when he was a part of the Normal Science Fair. He said it’d help him get into University, but he didn’t place in finals. <br/>I can’t decide if I miss him. <br/>It doesn’t matter right now. Things the Mage had brushed dust off of are disappearing. He touched Simon. Ebb’s goat disappeared while Mum was on campus trying to catch the Quids who nabbed her pen and her readers.<br/>Things we know:<br/>Mum’s desk has disappeared<br/>Ebb’s goat has disappeared <br/>The Draconan home’s entire basement vanished<br/>The Mage’s portrait disappeared <br/>Natasha Grimm Pitch’s portrait also disappeared <br/>Simon is gone<br/>Baz is gone<br/>Simon and Baz are having relationship problems<br/>Micah doesn’t love me <br/>This makes the American snort. <br/>“What?” I demand.<br/>“Did you ever think that part of the reason it takes you so long to solve things is because you have to fix everything you find along the way?”<br/>“I don’t have to fix everything.”<br/>“Simon and Basilton?”<br/>“He’s my best friend! He won’t hurt if I can help it.”<br/>“He’s not gonna end up like you.”<br/>“What?<br/>“Waiting for someone who doesn’t love him the same way.”<br/>I rest my head in my hands.  Because I can’t even look at him right now. He barely knows anything since meeting me. I’ve worked to keep it that way. And the Normal can read my mind. <br/>I hate this. <br/>“It’s not important,” I tell him. <br/>“If it’s bothering you, of course it is.”<br/>“It isn’t important.”<br/>Shepherd is already erasing Simon and Baz from my whiteboard in the air with his knuckles. <br/>Baz<br/>“My mother’s portrait isn’t here.”<br/>“What?”<br/>“My mother’s portrait isn’t here.”<br/>“Was there a portrait here?”<br/>“Crowley, Snow, I swear some days I’d never believe you spent months following me everywhere I go.”<br/>“Not fair!” Snow looks like a wounded animal when he’s hurt. <br/>“Completely fair.” It sounds like snark while I bleed from my bloodless and anguished body. “It was right here.”<br/>“Where?” <br/>I put my hand on the wall. Snow frowns at my fingertips and looks to the left. “His portrait was right here.” He won’t say his name, but something heartbroken and loving licks the wall through his fingertips. I know who he’s talking about. <br/>“Simon,” I start, moving away from the wall so I can feel his shoulder. He’s too thin. <br/>Simon<br/>His hands are like a skeleton’s. He’s dissolving and it’s all my fault. <br/>“Please,” I say. <br/>And of course a door appears.</p>
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<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I told you,” Baz smirks toward me.<br/>
“You told me nothing.”<br/>
“What’s that Professor Possibelf? Please is the most magic of words? Mm, yes, I do concur.  It is blatantly obvious that Snow performed magic.”<br/>
“Stop it!”<br/>
Baz<br/>
I mime as if I’m hopelessly lost in thought. I’m not hopelessly lost there. “No.”<br/>
“Baz!” Snow fails to whirl on me because his wings catch and create drag. All oxygen in the hallway is swept toward me with an unfortunate whoosh.<br/>
“Stop fighting me,” I murmur.<br/>
Snow doesn’t.  He stalks to the crisps and yellow pepper slices he dropped and tries to saunter away. It’s cute in a pathetic toddler sort of way.<br/>
“Snow!”<br/>
“I’m making Penny try!”<br/>
“Wait.”<br/>
Snow whirls on me.  “Go to hell.”<br/>
“Been there.”<br/>
“Yeah, and you can be hell king with Lamb.”<br/>
“Snow, I didn’t mean to—“<br/>
“To what, hurt me? Poor breakable Simon Snow. Just an orphan no one wants, even though he’s twenty and bloody well should have made some connection by now.”<br/>
“I…”<br/>
“I’ll send someone to go with you.  Stay here.”<br/>
The most comforting thing about Simon Snow has always been his predictability. When he had too much magic, he’d get mad and go off and leave everything in flames as he seethed, choosing party to be unaware of what he wrecked as long as he stopped feeling trapped. Anything to escape. He’s the same now, with the same stuck feeling.<br/>
Only this time I think he’s stuck with me.<br/>
I want him to be mine. I want him to want this.<br/>
I want him forever.<br/>
I wait against the wall facing the door. It’s a grand one: arched at the top instead of squared in harsh corners, coloured a songlike yellow. Wood rubbed so smooth that it pulsed against my palm like plastic.<br/>
Simon<br/>
“Shepherd, Baz wants you. He’s a right and a left down the hall.” I say it miserably, I can hear it, but I don’t have the strength I thought I had, that everyone else promised me I did. I’m just a Normal, and all my fight was taken from me because it wasn’t supposed to be mine. I wasn’t meant to be a fighter, maybe.Or maybe I was, but the Humdrum stole that, too.<br/>
Penny doesn’t say anything. She’s sitting cross-legged on the floor on the Mage’s astronomy chart.<br/>
“Penny?”<br/>
“Yes, Simon.”<br/>
“What are you holding?<br/>
Penny grins easy. “Nothing.”<br/>
I swipe my arm to topple the pile of books into her lap. “Simon,” she scolds, “you’re going to hurt Plant.”<br/>
I lilt my chin out because she doesn't make sense to me sometimes. “You forgot a. A plant. The plant.”<br/>
“I did not forget an article.”<br/>
I sigh.<br/>
“Simon, Plant is our goat baby. They’re the only one who hasn’t disappeared.”<br/>
“The goats are disappearing?<br/>
“Not all of them. Come cuddle Plant.”<br/>
Dropping to my knees and coming nose to nose with a strange newborn goat is the easiest thing that’s happened to me all week.  He doesn’t get up. Like he’s happy I’m holding him. He doesn’t care that I look like a monster or that I’m the loneliest Normal bastard the world of Mages doesn’t ever want to come face to face with. Again.<br/>
I really shouldn’t be here.<br/>
Plant is my new favourite living creature. Baz being my dead favourite. Penny might just be replaced. I told her that and she laughed.<br/>
“Simon, you okay?”<br/>
I nod.<br/>
“You sent Shepherd to Baz.”<br/>
“He’s just gonna go into a tunnel he isn’t going to die.”<br/>
“Simon, where did you find a tunnel?”<br/>
I shrug.<br/>
“Hey, you okay?”<br/>
“Baz says I spelled it open.”<br/>
“What happened?”<br/>
I shrug and kiss between Plant’s ears.<br/>
“Make a list Don’t even use adjectives. Everything that happened since Shepherd and I sent you and Baz to the forest.”<br/>
“Went to forest. Found nothing. Baz laid down. Fell asleep. I flew Saw faeries.”<br/>
“Why do they follow Baz like fiends,” Penny interjected. Then she noticed me frowning so I kissed Plant again on the nose.  “Go ahead Simon, sorry.”<br/>
“Did magic. Went with Baz to cabin. Panicked. Saw you. Came home. Looked at more magic things. Saw Baz and Shepherd. Went to get food. Saw a secret portal. Did magic again.”<br/>
“Fuck me. So you did magic.”<br/>
“I didn’t!”<br/>
“Don’t get mad at me, Simon.”<br/>
“I’m not magic anymore.”<br/>
“Why does it upset you so much?”<br/>
“That I’m Normal.  Penny, really?”<br/>
“That Baz wants to believe in you.”<br/>
“He doesn’t want to believe in me he doesn’t want to accept something that can’t change.”<br/>
“What if you were magic?”<br/>
“I’m not and I’m never going to be I wasn’t supposed to be ever.”<br/>
“You were born to two magickal parents, Simon.  Of course you’re destined to have magic, even a bit.”<br/>
Penny<br/>
He makes a face and lets Plant nuzzle against his chest, settling in the crook of his left arm. His tail swishes up to brush Plant’s nose.<br/>
“Simon, I’m not saying you’re gonna reget all your magic. You gave all of it to the Universe. A continual force of give and take.”<br/>
He huffs. My best friend, eloquent as Homer.<br/>
“Sometimes, though, things trickle where you don’t expect them to. It’s like when we were younger and you lost your ball in the road. And we got halfway down and there was a twig, so we tried to stop water by putting it in the path. And it just went over the twig. We were super disappointed that it didn’t go around it in two paths.” Simon makes some noise of assent.<br/>
“Just because you gave the Humdrum your magic doesn’t mean you aren’t a part of the world of Mages. We all have a choice. Ebb chose not to practice magic. Nicodemus chose to be a vampire. Lamb chose to move to Las Vegas and throw lavish parties and try to groom your boyfriend.”<br/>
“He shouldn’t be my boyfriend Lamb can have him.”<br/>
“You don’t mean that.”<br/>
“I can’t give him anything.”<br/>
“Simon, that isn’t what love is.”<br/>
“He doesn’t love me.”<br/>
“Simon.”<br/>
“Penelope.”<br/>
“Simon.  Baz doesn’t shouldn’t stay because he wants something about you physically. He loves your personality. He loves that you’re stubborn. He loves that you feel lost and he can hold onto you until you feel better. He likes when you argue with him.”<br/>
He grimaces like he’s about to yell at me, but Plant moves and the tension in his forehead lessens.<br/>
“Baz loves everything you aren’t.”<br/>
Fucker is leaning against the doorframe, coated handsomely in what looks like blood. I assume it is, because Shepherd looks… traumatized.<br/>
“Bunce is right,” he replies cooly.<br/>
I might have choked on the pepper if it weren’t for the growing concern that Simon doesn’t care that Baz is here. He hasn’t looked away from Plant. They are a cute goat. Plant knocks his nose against Simon’s from under, so he has to look at Shepherd and Baz through watered eyes.<br/>
His lip curls. “Who did you drink?”<br/>
Shepherd twitches. He’s not been squeamish in the time since we met, he’s so in tune with the psychology behind what each creature does for survival. Right now he just looks sick.<br/>
“Rabbit,” Baz announces casually, “Bit rabbit.”<br/>
I nod. I don’t know what else to say. Simon gets up and moves to Baz. Who just eyes Plant wearily.<br/>
Simon crinkles his eyebrows and squints up his nose. “This is Plant. They are mine. You drink them you die faster than you thought I could kill you. You need a shower. Let’s go.”<br/>
“Simon, what about the magic?”<br/>
He doesn’t answer.<br/>
Trying to finish a conversation with that boy is like trying to drink fire.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. this chapter is what I need to survive in this gay life</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Shepherd.”<br/>He beams at me seeming more than quite queasy. <br/>“Yes, darling?” He knows that I won’t push him when he’s covered in… dust? Ashes? Cocaine?<br/>“What is wrong with you?”<br/>“You gave Simon our baby.”<br/>“They aren’t your baby. They are a goat.”<br/>“Oh.”<br/>“Baz drank?”<br/>“More like freeze-dried the shit outta that rabbit,” he says.<br/>“Rabbits don’t bleed that much.”<br/>“Giant ones do.”<br/>“Giant rabbits. Brilliant.”<br/>“Well you’re a giant pain in the ass.”<br/>“What?”<br/>“The Office.”<br/>“That we’re in?”<br/>“The show. It’s from the Office?”<br/>I exhale like I’m breathing glass. “Ugh.”<br/>“What?”<br/>“Why does it seem like Simon and I spend time chasing thirteen different problems in a matter of hours?”<br/>“Well, you both get… intensely ready for anything.”<br/>“Ugh.”<br/>“What happened to your list?”<br/>“I accidentally erased it.”<br/>“How do you accidentally erase something you created?”<br/>I ignore him and begin writing in the air with my ring hand.<br/>“Why are you writing in a circle?”<br/>“You ask too many questions.” <br/>“You do too many weird things for me not to ask questions.”<br/>I don’t have the effort stored up in me to glare at him. Mum says that magicians have magic to a certain supply, that it isn’t endless. I’m beginning to wonder if our magic is infinite and our effort is what holds us back. Maybe we are just Normals after all. Humans with the same talent and the same limited drive. <br/>Baz<br/>Yellow teeth. <br/>Snow carries a goat. <br/>Red eyes.<br/>The goat looks safe. <br/>Simon looks like he’d let the world cave in around his chest if he could keep the goat safe.<br/>I can’t remember if he looks at me that way. <br/>I walk to the shower and kick off my shoes. And just get in (Fully clothed; I’m far too drained, wordplay unintentional.). The water doesn’t much echo in the pink hexagonal room (The toilets at Watford are pink, anywhere.).  The cold water. It’s cold. But I feel like I deserve it. <br/>Baz Pitch, everyone’s favourite acetic. <br/>I hear Simon kiss the goat and shuffle around. I’ll be damned if he isn’t making a bed for the goat from his own shirt. <br/>My arm should be room temperature. It’s hot like I’m human. LIke I’m not a monster. <br/>If. <br/>If I bit my arm. <br/>If I bit my arm, what would happen. <br/>My fucking fangs pop from the notion. <br/>If I bit my arm.<br/>Simon<br/>Plant is beautiful. I found some towels and a clean (it smells clean) shower curtain so they could have a warm place to rest. They don’t like when I scratch their ears like a lot of the other goats would, but they love when I pinch their ear light enough to hold and then smooth my hand over their ear. Like a double sided one-fingered pet. They didn’t like the stairs, it made them shake, so I glide my left two fingers over their ears and look at them until a more serene shine is in their eyes. Pretty eyelashes.<br/>I hum something to them about how I’ll be right back and stand (I might be more wobbly than they were) to see Baz. He needs me right now, but I don’t know how I could help him. I don’t know if I know him anymore.<br/>Startling boy. More than I was ready for. He’s hunched in pink water, tongue clipping slightly his fangs, eyelashes in his hair, arm facing up. He has such beautiful skin for a tattoo, all smooth and ghostly and gorgeous. <br/>“Baz?” I stretch toward his jaw where the blood is so thick it hasn’t softened yet. But I can’t.  I can’t touch him.  “What did you do?”<br/>He turns his face to fit into my fingerprints.<br/>I can’t do this. <br/>I snatch my hand away.<br/>“Simon!”<br/>I’m walking. <br/>“Why don’t you want me anymore!”<br/>I’m walking.<br/>Baz’s cold footsteps squeak against bloody tiles.<br/>I stop. Plant pokes their nose opposite my direction; I think the round way the room is confuses them. <br/>“Every time I touch you could be the last time. I don’t know if you’re still mine. I don’t know why you would stay.”<br/>“Simon.”<br/>I turn.<br/>“Simon.”<br/>“Baz.”<br/>“Simon.”<br/>“I’m depressed.”<br/>“I’m dead.”<br/>“I’ve got trauma.”<br/>“I’ve got a dead mother I watched kill herself to avoid being something I am.”<br/>“I think too much.”<br/>“Welcome, Snow, to life.”<br/>“I am all bad things.”<br/>“I signed up for all of this, Snow. Horridly morose, dripping with bitterness.”<br/>“Stop it, Baz! Stop trying to convince me to stop.”<br/>“Never.”<br/>He’s the most beautiful boy I will ever kiss. He’s the only boy I want to kiss. <br/>He’s the boy I want to kiss me. <br/>Baz<br/>“Do you still want this?”<br/>“What,” he whispers.<br/>“Do you still want us?”<br/>“Together?”<br/>“Are you still mine?”<br/>He just stares at me. “What do you mean?”<br/>“Exactly what I just asked, Snow.”<br/>“Why do you think I don’t?”<br/>Simon Snow can cook my heart over a fire and deliver my ring back to Andvari. <br/>“I…” he breathes out heavy. “You don’t want me to be yours.”<br/>His wings are going so fast that they’re practically buzzing. I really thought he’d twist this, strangle reason, and walk away with his goat. Instead he pulls me to the floor so my clothes scrape across with a wet sounding noise. Less of a squelch, more of a splat. <br/>Snow just looks at me with his sad eyes. <br/>“You don’t want me,” he repeats.<br/>“Simon.”<br/>“Answer.”<br/>“You don’t want me.” Enemy Baz is puddling onto the floor in pink water. Accusing. Cruel. Villainous. <br/>“Shut up!”<br/>“Argue back then, Snow.  Give me your best.  You won’t even talk to me anymore. You sit and you pout and you look off into the distance. You don’t have a hard time with Bunce of Shepherd.  Along goes Simon Snow, frolicking in the meadow with his goat and his wings, because only Simon ever matters to Simon.”<br/>“Jesus Christ.”<br/>“I’m not wrong. I’m your boyfriend, not another one of your pawns in the great Simon Snow chess game, where he the king lives forever while the rest of us crumble and wither.”<br/>“You’re fucking awful.” He looks broken and heart-filled and I don’t really care. <br/>That’s a lie. I care like I shouldn’t. <br/>He can decapitate me and bring my head to the princess. <br/>I shrug. Like him. “Doesn’t matter to me, Snow.”<br/>“Go fuck Lamb.”<br/>“Why do you keep bringing that up?”<br/>“Go have a good time drinking with your untraumatized vampire boyfriend who understands your every need and gets you fucking blood creme chocolates for Valentines.”<br/>“I didn’t have a good time because I was with him!”<br/>Snow glares. <br/>“I didn’t have a good time because I was pretending to be together.”<br/>More anger.<br/>I continue, “I had a good time pretending I wasn’t a vampire.”<br/>“Vampire.” Snow sounds like Max in Max and Ruby when she wants him to be the prince and he wants to be a vampire for Halloween. <br/>“I don’t hate being with you. I’m… burdened by me.”<br/>“And me,” he adds (unhelpfully).<br/>“No.  I don’t care, Snow.  I don’t care that you’re sad or lost or stuck.”<br/>“Well, you should.”<br/>“No.” Simon Snow should not be this talented at rendering me speechless. “I don’t like it. And I won’t be happy because you’re struggling. I’m not gonna leave because you are. It’s you. Bunce was right. I love everything you aren’t.”<br/>It doesn’t count as an I love you if you’re recanting to the person their own enchanting features. <br/>“What is it, Snow?”<br/>“What the fuck do you care?”<br/>“I’m your boyfriend,” I say. <br/>“I killed everything here, Baz.”<br/>“If you hadn't then I would have. I am a vampire.”<br/>“So what?”<br/>“You’re the alive one in the relationship. That officially counts as undead in the relationship rules.”<br/>“Why can’t I just stop?”<br/>“Stop what? Breathing?”<br/>“Thinking,” he snaps, exasperated. <br/>“Snow.”<br/>“I can’t. The Mage died and he took everything from me and he’s like a magical virus. I can’t stop it gets worse and worse. Every time you touch me my skin bubbles and I can’t stop thinking. I want to go back to the way I was I want to stop the noise the static the breaking everything is falling apart.”<br/>Simon<br/>I want to fly away. I’ll go to Africa there’s so much magic there. Or Asia. They have history.  I want to be able to kiss him without thinking. I want him to have every good thing. <br/>Baz<br/>I want him through every bad thing. <br/>Simon<br/>“You don’t need me.”<br/>“Yes, I do,” he says quietly.<br/>“Let go, Baz,” I mutter, “There isn’t anything here for you. I’m bad all the time. I’m gone. I’m not me.”<br/>“I am not letting go. You wouldn’t let me from the second I laid eyes on you.”<br/>“You don’t need me,” I repeat. <br/>Baz<br/>He will never know how much I need him. How he is my heartbeat. <br/>Simon<br/>I want to kiss him like I used to. <br/>Baz <br/>I want him to know I need him.<br/>“I need you here.”<br/>The words might have killed me were I not an undead. <br/>Snow’s face is unsieved anguish. “And you don’t anymore?”<br/>“And I’ll never stop.”<br/>“You can.”<br/>“I won’t.”<br/>“You should.”<br/>“I won’t.”<br/>“Why not,” he asks. <br/>“I just won’t. I’ve loved you for eight years.  I love you and I never intend on stopping.”<br/>Baz<br/>He’s the only boy I care about. The only man I want. I always want to kiss him, to have him, to keep him safe from everything but me. Winged and be-tailed and sloppy.  No manners and no filter (Not even in his water.  He’ll lick it from a puddle without second thought if he’s in a bind. Water is water.)<br/>“I’m a smaller man than you are,” he says.<br/>“You never could match me in height, Snow.”<br/>“Baz!” His wings churn the air around us. “Stop.”<br/>“Simon,” I start.<br/>“Baz,” he pleads.<br/>“Do you want me anymore, Simon?”<br/>“I want you forever.”<br/>He still talks without thinking.  Bless him to anywhere and everywhere. But this Simon Snow worries about what will happen afterward. It’s a change from not replaying a conversation at all. That was something I was used to. I don’t know if I should get used to this (Snow never ceases to surprise me. Usually it also scares me.)<br/>“Je t’aime.” I have never seen someone freeze as quickly as he did. Not with a charm not when he was shot (With a gun. Not Cupid’s arrow.) <br/>“Hmm?” Dead upon arrival to the one place I waited all my life to know.<br/>“Je t’aime. It’s French. A kid I used to know would graffiti it. It means—“<br/>“I know what it means, Snow.”<br/>“Simon,” he insists. <br/>“Simon.”<br/>“I didn’t mean it,” his eyes are ablaze and his mouth hangs open. Snow stars back.<br/>“Snow!”<br/>“I’m sorry!”<br/>“Snow, hey.” I gravitate toward him without thinking.<br/>“Ignore it, Baz. Pretend it didn’t happen.”<br/>“Simon!” It comes out more of a command than it does a name. Snow always perks up to authoritative threads in a tone of voice. He’s probably used to knowing when a fight is coming. <br/>He does turn around.<br/>Simon<br/>My eyes crash into his. <br/>“What,” I demand. <br/>“It’s okay.”<br/>“Baz, don’t.” Baz is trying to make me feel better. I rushed him into it. I pushed him. I cornered him I forced him into it. <br/>“I mean it, too.”<br/>“No you don’t have to say it I put you in a bad place.”<br/>Baz<br/>I don’t have to say it. <br/>I don’t have to say it? I’ve been waiting for eight years to say it.<br/>“I love you, Simon.”<br/>“You don’t mean it.”<br/>“I said it.”<br/>“Distressed-ish.”<br/>“Fuck it Snow of course I’m struggling you don’t believe me.”<br/>His face thaws a little then.  “You mean it?”<br/>“With all my heart,” I whisper.<br/>He winds his arms around me.  That’s better.<br/>“I love you,” I tell him against his mess curls piled. <br/>“Mean it.”<br/>“I mean it.  You didn’t make me,” I promise. “Someone had to say it first.”<br/>“Why didn’t you?”<br/>“I didn’t.”<br/>“You didn’t,” he repeats. <br/>“I thought if I wasn’t already dead it might kill me.<br/>Simon<br/>He loves me. Something just clicked back into place. America helped. Starwatching with Baz in the back of Shepherd’s truck. The beach and then the airport. After I got my wing shot and he held me tight. This. This moment on the stairs. <br/>Like we were bricks piled somewhere. Strong enough to withstand things but all broken up. And things are starting to fit us together neatly. Like maybe someone or something will seal our brick fate and I won’t feel like he’s tumbling from me.<br/>He’s my matching colour. <br/>Baz<br/>“I’m not leaving you, okay? I’m not letting you go.”<br/>“Promise.”<br/>“I promise.”<br/>“Swear.”<br/>“Swear it on my mother’s grave.”<br/>“Swear it on my mother’s.”<br/>“She’s not my mother it doesn’t count.”<br/>“Fine then I’ll swear it.”<br/>I lift an eyebrow. “Do it.”<br/>“I did.”<br/>“You can leave, Simon.  You don’t have to want me. Or be mine.<br/>“I’m only yours. But you can leave me for Lamb.”<br/>“I don’t want him. I’m not a vampire with him.”<br/>He bumps me with his elbow.  “You said you liked that.”<br/>“With him, I’m not a vampire. With you, I’m in love.”<br/>He holds me against him harder.<br/>“I’m not gonna let you go, Snow.  I like you on your bad days just fine.”<br/>“You should.”<br/>“But I won’t”<br/>He kisses my widow’s peak. <br/>We’re twisted around one another. His tail webbed through my fingers and my left knee in his lap. His left hand in my right back pocket. Tangled beyond escape. Labyrinth. <br/>I love that he’s resting against my chest.<br/>Simon<br/>I can’t kiss him yet.<br/>“I can’t—“<br/>“I know.”<br/>“But—“<br/>“Hush.”<br/>“I—“<br/>“You and me together. It doesn’t matter how.”<br/>“Promise.”<br/>“I promise.  Je t’aime, cherie.”<br/>“Too many words,” I mumble into his elbow. <br/>Baz nudges me with his nose.  “Where’d you get the goat?”<br/>“Penny. Their name is Plant.”<br/>“Their name should be Snow Loves Baz and Bunce Knew It All Along Grimm Pitch.”<br/>“But I do love Baz.”<br/>“Yeah.” <br/>I feel his breath against my jaw.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>13. ten months til Christmas</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hello, Friend!</p><p>This is your regularly scheduled  check-in. <br/>Please:<br/>Drink a lil water. Take a sip. Just a sip. Slurp it, if you will.</p><p>Eat a lil something. Fluff is technically more healthy than jelly....</p><p>Brush your teeth! Don’t be like me and be the first child of everyone in your family to get a cavity. </p><p>Open a curtain! A window! A door! Let the sun shine on! Do not be Elsa because if it didn’t work for her and she’s a princess it will not work for you. </p><p>Snuggle up in a blanket. Don’t be shivery. </p><p>Love your local pet (or my fish Andromeda and Talulah, you can’t be allergic to pet fish I don’t think waiiiiiit can you). </p><p>You are valid. You are amazing. You’re here for a reason.  Do not let ANYONE tell you otherwise.  YOU’RE MADE OF ATOMS AND YOU MATTER. You are perfect the way you are. </p><p>I love you. It will all untwist and it’s going to be beautiful. Everything is going to be just fine.  </p><p>And remember: If you were a transformer, you’d be Optimus Fine</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Baz<br/>Simon is sweet with Plant while I clean up. We should talk about how I could bite my arm. I could bite his arm but I won’t. But then I could bite my arm. And probably not get kuru because I don’t have enough blood to infect my brain proteins and cluster in my cerebellum. Because in fifth year I had discovered mad cow disease and learned that human flesh causes kuru. A rabbit hole ensued and Fiona ended up confiscating the medical textbooks I swiped from my stepmother’s library. Vampirism in humans causes a massive array of health problems beginning with high iron counts and featuring dehydration. Dehydration for drinking. <br/>pop I wonder what it’d be like to bite my own arm. <br/>He let me spell his clothes dry from my hanging onto him like a koala (my mother, from the Veil, sneers with disgust). <br/>“C’mon, Snow. Let’s see what Bunce cooked up while we were away.”<br/>He groans from  the (dusty and grimy) tiles, where he is laying and permitting Plant to prance around on his stomach.<br/>“You sure?”<br/>“Am I sure of what,” I ask him. <br/>I swear that that boy would feed his tail to a goat indeed. He’s wholly enraptured. <br/>“That you meant it?”<br/>I stretch an arm to help him up (chivalry will not die) and he grasps my wrist. “I’m the one who said it first and suffered an untimely panic from your resistance to my words.”<br/>Snow scratches his forehead. His curls get mussed. “Yeah but you get sappy.”<br/>“I don’t know whatever you could mean.”<br/>I waited for a boy I believed was straight who deemed me his greatest foe for seven years? His beliefs come absolutely out of the blue. <br/>Snow bites his lip, a habit he’s taken to lately. “You do.”<br/>“I know.”<br/>“Sometimes you make everything feel so big that I feel… ugh… I worry that I’ll be too small. To fit all the words.”<br/>“If that’s the case, I’ll apologize.”<br/>“No it’s not like that. I just hope I’m worth everything you waited for.”<br/>“And more.” He makes it easy to just sling an arm around him and kiss his forehead. <br/>“You think I’m silly.” <br/>“I think you’re wonderful.”<br/>“But you think it’s silly.”<br/>“I think it’s cute that you worried I don’t mean it because I said it first.”<br/>I can feel him shrug under my arm. <br/>“You’re good, Snow.”<br/>“I feel dumb.”<br/>“Good to know your emotions remain in touch with reality.”<br/>I deserve it when he shoves me (just a little). <br/>Only Simon Snow would hear ‘I love you’ and decide he has to be the first one to say it.<br/>I do love him for it.<br/>Bunce once-overs him when we walk in.  I must have passed, because Snow nodded at her and she nodded in return. <br/>“Took you long enough,” she mutters. Snow laughs lightly.<br/>“How’s Plant?” Shepherd ventures.<br/>Snow assesses for a second.  “Good.”<br/>My boyfriend, the next Arthur Miller.<br/>That’d make me Marilyn?<br/>“I devised a plan. And a slight theory,” Bunce declares.  <br/>“Why would it be only slight?” Fair question.<br/>“Because,” she starts, “I think it’s a part of something bigger. I’m not sure it would evoke immediate conflict resolution, but…” she trails off and scrawls something illegible on her list. “Alright, gentlemen.<br/>There are some important parts of your story and some parts that don’t matter.”<br/>“Oh, so my life then,” Shepherd interrupts. Penny makes a sour face.  He pulls a tissue from his pocket and waves it. “I surrender.  Continue on.”<br/>“Basilton,” she begins again, her cadence loud, “I like that the faeries follow you.” <br/>“What do faeries taste like?”<br/>“Shepherd! Fucking shut up!”<br/>“Sorry, Penny.”<br/>“No you aren’t.”<br/>“You’re right.”<br/>“They taste like spiced gumdrops and black licorice,” I add.<br/>“Basilton!”<br/>“I’m not sorry, Bunce.”<br/>She sighs, exasperated. “Everyone in this room identifying as male shut up.”<br/>Plant bleats against Snow’s hand. <br/>Bunce snaps her fingers on her left hand. “Faeries are creatures of good magic and light. I don’t think they’re following you because you’re a vampire, Baz.”<br/>“You think that, Baz,” Snow wants to know. <br/>“Well, Snow, they aren’t following you.”<br/>He considers this but doesn;t say anything. I can’t tell if it’s his Snow-no-words-most-of-the-time attitude or if he’s afraid of Bunce confiscating his goat or something. I wonder if they would allow emotional support goats on aeroplanes. I almost ask…<br/>“ANYWAY, gentleman, magickal creatures usually have a better intuition about danger. They are there for a reason. We can’t say they count as life in the forest where you and Simon went, because we have no way of ensuring from where they came. That being said, the house was empty and evenly coated in dust, according to Shepherd. If you object, wait until the end.  If there were objects or household items, they’d disappear with some sort of indication of a difference in time and exposure to dust mites.<br/>Of course Simon and Baz you found a tunnel. I swear to Merlin in purgatory that you find more trouble than the Cheeto Man in America.”<br/>“Wait good joke but why is Merlin in purgatory?” The American.<br/>“Why do you ask so many questions?” Bunce.<br/>“Why did you answer my question with a question?” American.<br/>“Merlin’s in purgatory because he was good and evil and no one wants him.” Snow.<br/>“That was very booksmart of you, Snow.” Me.<br/>“Shut up.” Snow.<br/>“I THINK WE SHOULD TAKE THE FAERIES AND GO INTO THE TUNNEL.”<br/>Bunce.<br/>“Ugh you want us to go back? After the bad hare day we had,” Shepherd jokes.<br/>Snow smiles. Bunce does not.  “Yes.”<br/>“We’ll climb over the carcass and be on our way,” I say cooly.<br/>“Precisely.” Bunce nods determined. <br/>“Perfect,” Shepherd says, looking mildly sick. <br/>“I’m guessing you didn’t eat the food Snow brought.”<br/>“Well, Baz, I was just a little overwhelmed.”<br/>“Oh?” Yes, I raise my left eyebrow.<br/>“See, I love the horror movies,” Shepherd starts. “The Human Centipede? Disgustingly wonderful. That being said I am additionally a very sensory person. As an American if it isn’t cruncht or fried, and has that squishy organic taste to it, I am not a fan. I’m just not really into the whole unbelievable amounts of gore scent. Wouldn’t buy a candle.”<br/>“Damn it, Snow,” I say.<br/>He looks from under his curls up to me. “Hm?”<br/>“We can’t burn the birthday candle you gave me.”<br/>He crinkles his nose. <br/>He really is the most beautiful boy. He should be bitter and hate the world and all he does is bathe every room in gold and glitter glue.  So you end up stuck to him. His bottom lip is so full and his eyes are beautifully wide while his nose curves up like some sort of mathematical symbol. Scrawled in the center of his face. <br/>Bunce rolls her eyes. “We’re going in the tunnel, gentleman, and we’re going to find wherever it leads, and we will figure out why everything is disappearing. Living goats are gone. Ancient artifacts. The last thing I am going to allow to happen is Watford and everyone in it to dissolve. I cannot collect massive populations of magickal beings to create a diverse population of educated individuals without a place. Or people. Or magic.”<br/>“You forgot the magic part of your list.”<br/>“Yeah thanks, Shepherd. We don’t know if the Mage’s essence can take magic and still leave……………… a person.”<br/>“It’s fine, Penny,” Snow groans, “I’m not going to perish because I don’t have anymore.”<br/>“And your relationship won’t, either,” I say. Obnoxiously.<br/>He makes a face at me.<br/>“I love you?”<br/>“I love you, too,” he grumbles.<br/>I can see Shepherd and Penny grin at one another like we’re not in the biggest unsolvable crisis of the last thirty six hours. <br/>Simon<br/>We’re in the tunnel. Baz isn’t holding my hand, because he did but I asked him not to. I hope this doesn’t send the wrong message. I do love him. I just… can’t. I feel all wrong. Then someone touches me, he touches me, and his fingerprints just remind my brain that it isn’t just a consciousness. That it’s actually in fact connected to my body and I have to live in said body. A body I feel no connection to. So someone touching me pulls me back into the wrong place, but if I didn’t have the body I’d be in the right place, but I need a beating heart.<br/>It makes my head hurt.<br/>He is walking next to me.<br/>He did tell me that we’re okay. After I said don’t hold my hand. Very panicked. And wrong sounding. He didn’t mind, I guess.<br/>I miss the sedation of my relationship with Agatha and the belief that I wouldn’t make it to twenty. <br/>Penelope walks first, then Shepherd, then me and Baz together.<br/>Shepherd’s tattoos seem to glow in the dark.<br/>“Oh, look, a giant rabbit carcass,” Penny says flatly.  Her monotone makes me giggle. <br/>“And on your right, please do not walk. And on your left, folks, also don’t walk. There is a slight ginormous obstruction in our pathway.”<br/>“Thank you for adding nothing but noise pollution to this tunnel, Shepherd.”<br/>“Hey!”<br/>“Shh. Let me think.  We can probably get through. ‘Crystal clear’?”<br/>“I think that would make it translucent, but it would still be a solid,” Baz answers. <br/>“That eliminates ‘I can see right through you’.”<br/>“It wouldn’t need to be clear to pass through.  Well, for light, yes, but we might not need to change the physical appearance to change the matter.”<br/>“Hmm,” Penny muses, “How about ‘to be or not to be’?”<br/>“It only has half of a chance of working.”<br/>“Ugh okay how about ‘bugger all’?”<br/>“That’s very temporary. The emotions behind the words fade quickly to a more temperate state.”<br/>“Basilton,” Penny whines. <br/>“I know. Maybe ‘fake news’.”<br/>She turns to him all disgusted. “Really?”<br/>“Yes,” he says decisively, “No one can tell if the news is really fake or not. No matter who says it it’s silly more than calling out a wrong.  It has neither a fully serious nor a fully playful connotation.”<br/>“But there’s no guarantee that it’ll work.”<br/>“It’s more of a lasting displacement of thoughts than the other.”<br/>Penny brandishes her ring hand. She has to say the spell twice because the first time she says it so half-arsed that we all end up laughing.<br/>But it does work. Damn Baz.<br/>So we keep going for a few more minutes until we end up in the catacombs.<br/>“Baz you never came here.”<br/>“Snow, you never followed me over here.”<br/>“So you were here?”<br/>“Nor did I lead you here.”<br/>I nod. <br/>Penny touches the bleached bones. “I think… I think these are new bones.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>14. I’m cripplingly depressed yes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Simon<br/>“What the fuck?”<br/>“Shepherd, that’d be the best question I’ve heard you ask in all the time we have known one another,” Baz says.  <br/>“Thanks, Vampire.”<br/>“Fuck off.”<br/>There’s the Baz we all know and slightly detest at times of crucial moments wrecked by sardonic comments (usually desiring something along the lines of eating the rich… he is rich, though….) . <br/>“We need to test this,” Penny mutters. <br/>“Uh, test this?”<br/>“Yeah… they’re not yellow enough…”<br/>Baz sniffs, somehow refined and prim. “It’s not bleach…”<br/>Penny frowns. <br/>“You want my suggestion or nah?”<br/>I nod. He shouldn’t feel wholly unwelcome. Just mild to average discomfort. <br/>“I read this Holocaust book in December on our front porch. It was talking about boiling bones.  Then they accidentally became cannibals. The UPS guy thought I was waving a swastika at him. Anyway, yeah, you don’t need bleach.”<br/>Baz and Penny shake their heads intellectually. <br/> “Did the Mage kill people?” <br/>“Simon…” Penny reaches for me. I let her hold my shoulder. <br/>“We don’t know what he did,” Baz’s tone is heavily grim, “but we’re here together. We’ll figure it out together and help to right the world.” He doesn’t touch me. I know if he does it’ll kill me. Baz touching me has started to feel like a cut on a sunburn. But more than anything, I do want it. I want to feel safe and he can do that. I know it isn’t him. It’s me, I know it. But I don’t know how to stop it. I can’t… I want him to touch me. But nothing is absolute anymore. Everytime I look at him could be the last. And… I’m so impermanent. I’m so… not normal. He just can wake up and change his mind and I just. Can’t stay in the moment of his skin. No matter how much he promises. The Mage was just another lie. On top of another lie. The Humdrum. Another lie. Nothing seems real. And everything disappearing is adding to my sense of pretend. <br/>Plant nudges against my chest. I think they’re nervous. “It’s alright, love,” I whisper. I can’t look at Baz. <br/>Every time I look at him I expect him to crumble and a cloud of dust and ashes to waft in my eyebrows. <br/>If I could bottle up time, I think I’d smash it against a brick wall. Maybe everything would stop mattering against my brain, then. <br/> Penny begins to kick the wall. Baz, of course, dances to her, plucks one with ease, and shakes his hair from his face. It’s still wet. <br/>“Here.”<br/>“Thanks.”<br/>Penny scratches her arm and rubs her glasses with her sleeve. “You wanna go on?”<br/>“As much as I’d love to, carrying a human skull, I think I’m all set.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>15. I</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I literally literally literally <br/>This is my two weeks of trying<br/>so here tale this fuckery and say some prayers that I’m not kicked out for being mentally divergent/queer as all hell</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Penelope<br/>“No,” Simon says.<br/>He is met with an incredulous ‘what’ from Shepherd and a slanted eyebrow from Baz. <br/>“No,” he echoes himself. “We’re finding out what’s down here.”<br/>“Snow…”<br/>He pulls a face at Baz and reaches a hand out. <br/>“I-“ I don’t know what to say. <br/>Simin growl/huffs. “I’m not going to break.”<br/>“Okay.”<br/>Simon takes it with a high-fiving palm smack type of noise (Kinky. Someone has to say it.). <br/>Baz<br/>His bottom lip catches his top lip so he’s pouting with both lips. <br/>“Kid.”<br/>My partner, the neanderthal. Plant, a kid (of goat parentage), meeps. “Not you, Plant,” Snow mutters.”A baby baby.”<br/>A baby baby. Exactly.<br/>“Penny, dya have any type of lab nearby,” Shepherd inquires.<br/>“Magickal or biological?”<br/>“Bio.”<br/>“Hell no.  Why?”<br/>“I could PCR the shit out of this and make a DNA profile of the child and then we could maybe trace it to other wizards using superimposition of the skull onto images.  Maybe create a likeness.”<br/>Bunce whacks her head with her palm.  “Jesus and Merlin in a hot tub.  You’re a science nerd.”<br/>“What, and you think science kills magic?”<br/>Her tone matches Shepherd’s in defensiveness. “On the contrary, our magic is based around the magic and science of doctors and researchers. I just can’t believe you’re such a nerd.”<br/>“I’m an educated young man who carries poor karma of generations prior on his shoulders and looks badass.”<br/>“And you know about DNA TESTING AND EXTRACTION?”<br/>Poor Bunce. The first time she’s giggled in a long while and all she does is</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I actually wish I was kidding I’m so sorry all I want to do is write and my brain doesn’t let me it literally I get paralyzed and twitchy</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>16. Chapter 16</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Poor Bunce. The first time she’s genuinely (albeit accidentally) giggled and it’s at the American. Poor American, he’s scientifically obsessed with wasting precious time on methods of far longer waiting periods. <br/>Poor Snow, because the goat is trotting away. <br/>He’s asking Plant where we’ll go. I’m left holding a toddler skull instead of any part of him…… but I suppose it is a good thing that he isn’t a skeleton named something uniquely archaic, like Papyrus. <br/>“The smell of bleached humanity in the evening delights me,” I muse.<br/>“Sing.”<br/>“Thanks, Bunce, but I’d prefer to grind my hair in a pestle and snort it.”<br/>“Ew,” Simon chimes, rather absently, his voice muffled because his chin is locked against his chest as he looks down. (Like a meningitis test.  At least he can do it.  So Snow doesn’t have meningitis. I’d hate for him to writhe about, febrile, bed ridden, and marked by rash… which could be painful……. and...ooze…..)<br/>“Sing.  The priests in France would at night while they were moving skeletons.  It’s a way to communicate with any form of life.  Who you are. Where you come from.”<br/>Snow glances back at her crookedly. “Brilliant.”<br/>She smiles at him squinty-eyed lips drawn. “Thanks, Simon.”<br/>“What would you ask of me to sing?” <br/>“You can’t Shepherd,” I tell him, “You don’t carry magic in your voice.”<br/>“Uh, I’m cursed. It doesn’t get more magical than that.”<br/>Snow snorts.  “Have something to say, tail boy,” I ask him. <br/>“Fuck off.”<br/>I sigh.  “Bunce, make him show you.”<br/>“Simon, I’m making you show me.  Basilton what the fuck am I making him show me?”<br/>“That he swiped some of my magic and dripped it into his words.”<br/>“Yeah, let’s talk about that s’more,” Shepherd adds.  I’m beginning to regret telling him in the first place. <br/>“Hush,” Penny chides. <br/>Simon spins around fast.  “Baz says I can, I say I can’t.”<br/>Bunce hustles to Snow and rings her ring hand around his pinkie with hers. I don’t want to be jealous, and a part of me isn’t. But a part of me just wants to be held without consequences or fears or someone breaking me or me breaking someone. <br/>He carries enough with twining me around his shoulders. <br/>“Say something magic.”<br/>“What do you want me to say?”<br/>“Say something you know worked before.”<br/>“It didn’t work!”<br/>“Simon, it’s going to be alright.”<br/>“Penny.”<br/>She looks at him in the eyes. “It’ll be okay, Simon.  You have to do new things to see what’s gonna hurt.”<br/>“I know it’s going to hurt.”<br/>“You are hurting so it seems like anything is gonna cause hurt.” Snow doesn’t like when Bunce talks AT him <br/>“Stop.”<br/>Snow pulls away and walks over to me. And hugs me hard. And hides his face in my neck. My face must have been incredulous because Bunce is smirking to the point of the smirking emoji.  “You’re always fighting me, Snow.”<br/>“I don’t want to.”<br/>“You think too much and not enough at the same time.”<br/>He nods against me. I’ll keep him like this for always. <br/>Heartbeat. <br/>Finger twitch.<br/>Tail swoop.<br/>Jaw clenched. <br/>Stomach growl. Leg shake. Hip twitch. Beat of his thumb against my spine. <br/>His wings have surrounded us in a sort of shelter.  <br/>“No one is making you do it, Snow.”<br/>Snow comes to me with his feelings the same way I’d go to my mother’s office and drown in candy and the mothering presence.  It’s peculiar, that. He won’t start a conversation while sporadically delving into his emotions.<br/>“Hey, Snow,” I whisper. <br/>“Hi, Baz.” His response is carmelizingly sweetly matter of fact. <br/>“I’ll be a dreamcatcher for you.”<br/>“What?”<br/>He’s warm and he’s smushed against my chest. I cup my palm to my mouth and whisper the answer to him. Then I let him balance my flame, the blue fire.<br/>“I’ll be here in the dark. When you’re ready to let go the things that hurt you, let them go to me. I’ll catch them. I’ll take them away so they can’t come back.”<br/>Nothing is sacred, nothing is private. So saying something so unbelievably extraordinarily mushy and sappy in front of my boyfriend, my friend/academic enemy, my prisoner, and the spirits of three thousand something shouldn’t feel awkward. I’m the one who chose to say it. But still. Even though I said it quietly. <br/>I just can’t believe I said it at all. <br/>Anything Simon Snow related and I’m a sap. His expression doesn’t shift, which sets me into automatic unease. But he does nod. <br/>The flame melts into the palm of his hand, into a dreamcatcher no greater in size than an egg. Pastel blues and purples. A little yellow, for my Simon, my highlight, my sunshine boy. <br/>“Then then won’t come back,” he mutters.<br/>“Then they won’t come back,” I affirm. <br/>Simon<br/>It’s hard. To feel like this. Overwhelmed one minute and safe the next. Irritated and trapped and then the person I’m confused at switches. Penny sometimes she just says it all wrong. <br/>It’s bloody evil to say that she says things weird when I can’t string a sentence together proper enough to write a paragraph, but sometimes it doesn’t click. <br/>“Stop,” I announce against Baz’s collarbone. It makes him tense up and tilt funny like he has a cramp in his left foot and can’t feel it anymore. <br/>But he can still hold the back of my head and call me good and brave. <br/>He does that. <br/>He can still let me go. <br/>He doesn’t. .<br/>Penny is next to me with her hand out again. Baz moves from me.<br/>And Penny and I try and it doesn’t work. Her face goes sour like she smells something weird.<br/>“What did I do?”<br/>“Oh, Simon, nothing. It’s like being smacked against a wall.”<br/>“It doesn’t burn?”<br/>She sighs.  “That, it did not do.”<br/>“So it doesn’t work.”<br/>“It does work, but with a more powerful wizard and a gay subplot.”<br/>“Penny!”<br/>“Simon.”<br/>“Penny.”<br/>“Simon.”<br/>“Penny.”<br/>“Simon.”<br/>He covers my mouth before I can say Penny’s name again (for the fourth time).  I lick the edge of his palm.<br/>“Snow.”<br/>“Baz.”<br/>“Snow.”<br/>“Baz.” Penny and Shep have drifted forward again. The magic show is over, I guess.  Aren’t we gonna talk about it?<br/>“You licked me so you know I’m not gonna do it again.”<br/>“Baz.”<br/>“I’m not answering you.”<br/>“Baaaaaaaaaaaaaazzzzazazazazaz.”<br/>“I’m walking away from you.”<br/>“Your name is Baz.”<br/>“That is my nickname, yes.”<br/>“Your nickname is Baz.”<br/>“We’ve established this.”<br/>“But Bazzzzzzz.”<br/>“Stop pestering me.”<br/>“Noooooo.”<br/>“Snow if you think for a second I’m going to let you molest my palm with your tongue then you have sadly underestimated my self control.”<br/>“Ew you said that so gross.”<br/>“You’re the palm licker.”<br/>“Baz!”<br/>“Snow!”<br/>I cut by Penny and take off running.  He starts to chase me. We’ll probably end up eviscerating any important information because we’re pounding through ancient bone halls.  But Baz was smiling and he was so genuinely disgusted when I licked him and I’d cross any line to see that face again.<br/>alskjflskjfalskjfsalksjd;lfkjs;dlfjksl;dkjf;lskfj<br/>Plant bashes their nose into a box. <br/>Baz catches me around the waist and keeps me against him. <br/>I don’t deserve this safe feeling.<br/>“We don’t know what it is yet.”<br/>He can’t stop himself from reaching out and I can’t stop myself from leaning into him.<br/>“It’s a box,” Penny says from over Baz’s shoulder.<br/>“It’s multiple boxes,” Shepherd adds (from over Penny’s shoulder, from over Baz’s shoulder, from me against him, to my looming over Plant.<br/>Part of me expects someone to pop out from the shadows and announce that I’m staring at multiple boxes enclosed in a bag or something. <br/>Baz clinks our heads together lightly. “See what it is.”<br/>I kneel and close my eyes and touch paper. Piles of paper.<br/>“Baz?”<br/>“Flame?”<br/>I nod. “It’s mail.”<br/>“It’s what?” Penny asks.<br/>“It’s mail,” I say.<br/>“What is it,” Shepherd wants to know. <br/>“It’s mail,” Penny answers. <br/>“To who?”<br/>“To whom,” Baz and Penny correct.<br/>“Don’t do that again,” I say.<br/>“What?”<br/>“Don’t talk together again, Bunce.”<br/>“It’s addressed to me,” I say. “It’s all for me.”<br/>Baz is quicker than I can react. <br/>“Yellow parchment. How quaint.”<br/>“Bazzzzz.”<br/>“We’re not doing this again, Snow.”<br/>“Read it dramatically,” Penny suggests. <br/>“What? No!”<br/>“Protestations will get you nowhere, Simon.”<br/>“Penny, what if it says, like, I’m gonna die tomorrow.”<br/>“I’d be more concerned about saving you than accepting it??”<br/>Baz clears his throat grandly. “Dear Simon, I promised myself that I wouldn’t write. You’re so beautiful, though, and I have every article about you saved… <br/>You’re like my hero. There are so many wonderful things you’ve done. You’ve saved so many people. I… <br/>Here’s an article I saw last week where they interviewed you. You sound so down to earth. Maybe someday I can meet you and we can talk about things in person. How you feel about everything? How you like fighting? do you like swords better than handheld magic objects?” Baz stops reading because the sword statement made him snort. <br/>I feel like crying. I never interviewed with anyone. I never…<br/>Baz isn’t looking at me right now. I need him to. <br/>He isn’t looking at me. <br/>I really need him to. <br/>Because everything I ever worked to defend was flaunted in Mage’s Magazine (and the junior version Maturing Mages Magazine).<br/>I feel like I’m supposed to be dying but my body is too stubborn to.  I keep not breathing and my brain only tells me when the boxes start spinning.  I’m not in my body. I’m above my forehead using my eyes as binoculars. I’m watching my hands. I’m glaring at the letters. But I can’t take myself out of my chest. And it’s too loudly quiet. Everything is collapsing. <br/>Why won’t Baz look at me? Why did Baz say he loved me and not let me say it back? Why doesn’t Baz care if I can touch him? Why is Penny convinced I can do magic again? They’re just dumb words that pack power because everyone says them. Like probably would carry some power, too. Everyone says like. I don’t say like. I try not to say like. I wonder if Baz is spelling himself. Crowley maybe he wants me to touch him so he’s just pretending. Maybe he’s trying to turn me against Penny by seeming like the good guy and better than her. <br/>Why didn’t Agatha want me? Why is Agatha repulsed by me? Why does she roll her eyes when she thinks I’m not looking? Why does she sneer at me when I turn around? Why does she act like it wasn’t her choice to leave? Why does he resent me? Why does she look at me like she makes it a point not to? Why does she appear everywhere I am and act like she hates breathing the same air as I do? Why does she feel so far away? Why wasn’t I enough for her? Why am I enough for anyone? Why does anyone want me like this?<br/>I shouldn’t be enough. I shouldn’t need my partner and my best friend to listen to me. I shouldn’t need reassurance. I shouldn’t want them because it’s selfish to need someone. Agatha told me that needing someone is bad and I shouldn’t need someone. That I should stop seeing the good in her and pointing it out because it puts her on a pedestal and she doesn’t want me to pretend she’s perfect. I didn’t mean it like that.  I just meant it like….. like the way you acknowledge the bad but know it’s good anyway because it’s a flaw of the other person. It’s something they do wrong. So it’s something they are choosing to be themselves about. So it’s them being honest. So if they’re being honest and authentic they are being themselves with you and that’s real love. So by having flaws they are human and loving you in a living breathing creature way and that makes you perfect. <br/>I didn’t mean it bad like that. I’m not tryna be annoying. Or wrong. Or needy or bad. I’m not trying to be borderline abusive like my dad was. I’m not trying to let someone tell me what to believe like my mom did. I’m not trying to despise the life around me like Baz’s mom did. I’m not trying to be selfish. I’m not trying to be needy. I’m not trying to make everything about me. <br/>Why does getting better feel so selfish? And why do so many people lie to you along the way?<br/>I don’t want to be a pad person or a liar. I don’t want to complain or be negative or just quit trying. I don’t want to be doing this for attention. I don’t want to make everything about me. <br/>Baz is looking at me now. <br/>No one wants to say my name.<br/>“I think the mage did some damage control,” Penny offers.<br/>Shepherd adds, “Or some serious propaganda reaching out only to specific audiences to target thinking and morph it.”<br/>Penny hmms.  “Baz’s sister certainly didn’t subscribe to, what is it? Ha Maturing Mages Magazine. I don’t know if this was for human audiences. There’re a lot of, uh, creepy ads in here. Enhancing your Mage-ic half with Lumino. All-natural pixie wing shrinker. Hair removal for all creatures, invented by centaurs for centaurs and other hallowed hirsute herbivores.”<br/>Baz hasn’t looked away from me. <br/>I don’t think I want to say my name either.  <br/>At this point, I don’t know if I even want my name.<br/>Baz<br/>He’s not looking at me. I’m standing with my net and all this hope and he refuses to look at me. I don’t even know if he knows I’m here. <br/>It’s all lies. More lies. <br/>I’m beginning to regret draining that rabbit. I feel sick now and I have to piss. <br/>It led us here.<br/>“So, we have someone impersonating you and a lot of mail someone kept from you.”<br/>Snow glares and wrinkles his nose. He’s stretched out over to the second box and is holding a letter written on (what looks like) mossy white birch tree bark. <br/>“Simon, my name is Prymr. I drew you fighting the Chimera. I heard about it and I thought it’d be really cool. So here, dude, you’re awesome.”<br/>The drawing is kind of awesome, if it didn’t make Snow look like a satyr.<br/>“I’m just a lie to these people.”<br/>“Snow, it…” I trail off. Because I have no idea what to say. And if I did, I don’t think I have the right to tell him. He’s been working with an intense focus on seeing the person he knows himself to be, and hurdling the words everyone has said to him who he and his American therapist in Chicago decided he couldn’t trust (Bunce and I were on the first list with her parents, Agatha was on the take-a-step-back-list, and the don’t trust list was by far the longest ((featuring the Mage, Dev, Niall, me before I confessed my undying devotion, anyone who is younger than he is, Agatha’s parents..)) and the most disappointing. I hate that so many people used Simon to get what they want or a power source they needed in the moment.).<br/>“We should sit in a circle,” Shepherd decides. <br/>“Since when did you become a part of this group about whose opinion we care?”<br/>“Basilton!”<br/>“Penelope. I asked a question.”<br/>“Since I have a good idea.”<br/>Bunce slaps the back of her hand over my face. “Not a word, Pitch.”<br/>The narrow hallway allows for more of an ovular rectangle than it does a circle, but I’m across from Snow reclining comfortably against a floppy cardboard box of letters.  <br/>“Now what, All-knowing American?”<br/>“Well.  I have no idea. I just felt useless standing around staring at Simon and feeling bad for him.”<br/>Bunce smacks him, then. <br/>“I don’t want everyone to feel sorry for me,” Snow mumbles.<br/>“It’s okay, Bunce. I already told Snow that I’ll never stop feeling sorry for him.”<br/>“It’s not the same thing as pity.”<br/>“No, I would say it isn’t.” And I really wouldn’t go so far as to assert the importance of pity in my romantic relationship. It will forever hurt my heart that my whole soul lost his magic, and that he won’t be the person he fully believed he wanted to be. That will never change. <br/>“How about this, Snow?” He’s looking only at Plant trying to gain enough balance to stand on his tangled legs. “Tell me something that’s confusing you and we’ll argue with you.”<br/>He shakes his head. The strangest part of all of this is how much talking at Snow Bunce and I have to do to reassure him. <br/>“Hey, Pitch?”<br/>“Yes, Bunce?”<br/>“I like that Simon cares so much. He has the biggest heart. Animals always can tell that he’ll be sweet and good to them.” Bunce nods in the direction of Simon and Plant. <br/>“Mm. I like how he wants the right thing. He wants to do the right thing.”<br/>“I like how he’s considerate for other people. He’s a good listener.”<br/>“I like how Snow wants to be the best he can be to everyone around him so much that he gets mad when he can’t be perfect.”<br/>“I like how he eats everything all the time.”<br/>“That’s a good one. I like how he used to steal my crisps and eat them on my bed when I wasn’t home.”<br/>“I like how he’s always honest even if he doesn’t mean to. If he doesn’t like something we can always tell.”<br/>I’m pretty sure I’m looking at him like he’s the sun and I’m sod but he really does that. He either stops reacting or he gets mad and goes off and tells you every single word that’s on his mind or nearby in the brain atmosphere. He is my favourite boy on this planet and the past two and the next six. “I love how he’s selfless,” I say, “And more than anything he’s good. How nothing about him is bad. He’s genuine and sweet and incredible and the bravest fucker I’ll ever know.”<br/>His brows are wrinkled together. “We all say things and they come out the wrong way, Snow. We get down on ourselves. We want to push the people we love away… but we love you. Penelope and I love you and that isn’t going to change. We’ve been stuck with you for almost a decade and we know that you’re good.”<br/>Bunce leans on him from his right and smiles, and I’m sure he can feel it because of the half of her face smushed into his shoulder. “This is all lies, Simon, but you’re not a lie. You’re very very real.”<br/>He doesn’t say anything when he looks at the dreamcatcher looped around Plant’s neck. He doesn’t look away when he reaches for another letter, hands it to Shepherd, hands another to Bunce, awards me one, and reclines against the hollow walls with one of his own.</p>
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<a name="section0016"><h2>17. This chapter is really gay</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Simon gave Plant the bark letter.  They didn’t seem to morbidly object.  They ate it.  <br/>Now he and Baz are holding hands, strolling almost peacefully, Baz with a box on his hip the same way you’d carry a toddler, and Simon thumbing the skull absently. <br/>“You’re good to him,” Shepherd says.<br/>“Nonsense. He needs us and the least we can do is reassure him. He found out that his entire life is all lies, and he doesn’t feel validated. He just feels lost right now, and hopeless, and useless, and not important to anyone. It’s just a cycle he has to break out of on his own, but we can at least help him feel less crazy and less alone.”<br/>“I don’t think you’ve ever said a sentence that makes less sense, but I do understand what you’re trying to say. It seems to be a kind of drop-everything-and-deal-with-the-problem-in-the-moment type of issue.”<br/>“Reassurance helps.”<br/>“If this were a book, you realize most of the dialogue would be reassurance-seeking conversations?”<br/>“Yes, and I wouldn’t rather it’s anything else.”<br/>“Hmm.”<br/>“Simon wasn’t always a talker. He’s more of a stutter or nod type of person.”<br/>“I don’t believe you.”<br/>“I wouldn’t either.” I sigh and know he’s trying to figure out what it is that I’m trying to figure out (he’ll figure wrong). “C’mon, we’re falling behind.”</p><p> </p><p>It’s peculiar to be back in this room. A stretch between our beds feels longer than it’s ever been <br/>I’ve wound my hands around his forearms. It only makes him twist and whine. He holds me with praying eyes and tortured hands. <br/>“Baz.”<br/>I prop myself up on a crooked left elbow. Not touching hurts and I want to make him stop hurting and I don’t know how. My mother’s most-recited rule revolved around an understanding that taking on the emotions of another would end in pain, so worry only focused on oneself was the way to survive. <br/>And the fucking narcissist did it just fine when she needed to. But I look at Snow and would die for him, I’d erase every line someone set in permanent marker, drink the Atlantic Ocean, cry a new one; I’d do anything for this boy. I’d let myself drown before the current dared to brush at his ankles. <br/>I’m dying. <br/>I feel like I’m dying. <br/>Maybe he was never magic at all. <br/>Simon Snow, you’ve never been magic at all. Just a pull I need to answer, just a push I need to live, just standing on a cliff. Just standing on a cliff edge and shouting for someone to push me. Just wanting him to push me.<br/>Maybe that’s the problem. <br/>Click clack. <br/>Snow’s always commanded a room when he doesn’t want to. He’s breathtakingly average in his appearance. He’s intriguing to people. The elephant man, dancing psychosis, Simon Snow. I’ll let him command this one, too. I’ll lay like the Christ himself and he can roll di on the pale underneath of my right wrist. <br/>Simon Snow. I tell him it’s alright. That he isn’t under pressure. That he’s beautiful to me always. Even when he was furious at me for “stealing” his girlfriend in the forest (he’s so easy to mess with). <br/>I know I could deserve a god but I want to settle with him. <br/>I’m sprawled like I am being crucified but my eyes are closed. Warm yellow light drips under my eyelids. <br/>“Baz.” My name is anything but a question. <br/>“Snow.”<br/>“Please, Baz.”<br/>“Yes, cor meum?”<br/>“What? I—“<br/>“Words, Snow.”<br/>“Shut up Baz.”<br/>I do. <br/>“Baz you still get old, right?”<br/>“I suppose. I went through puberty.”<br/>“I don’t believe you.”<br/>I laugh. “I suppose you believe my mother birthed me like this?”<br/>“Baz, please.”<br/>“What?”<br/>“I…” he stammers for a moment, “What’s gonna happen when we get old?”<br/>Touched and broken. He wants to be with me. Cool. Pretend I’m holding fire in my hands instead of taming ice. “Why, Snow, are you gonna wait until I’m old to off me so no one suspects you, the old bastard with soggy wings and freckles instead of age spots?” <br/>“I don’t want you to live without me.”<br/>I can’t breathe. He repeats the same phrase with slightly less difficulty. And then buries his face in his hands. My eyes are open now but he can’t see me looking at him the same way I look at a deer in the forest at home. <br/>“I’m not supposed to say that.”<br/>“What?” All I can fucking say is what. <br/>I’m drowning in quicksand. <br/>“It’s abusive and selfish to need people.”<br/>“I know Agatha told you that.”<br/>“I’m bad I’m bad.”<br/>“No.”<br/>“Turn me.”<br/>“What?”<br/>“Turn me you can do it turn me so I can’t miss you.”<br/>“Absolutely not.”<br/>“Baz, please. I can’t lose you too.”<br/>“You’d lose Bunce.”<br/>“But she’s not fucking immortal.”<br/>“Simon.”<br/>“Yes.”<br/>“I’ll make a deal with you.  When we’re old, when you’ve outlived Bunce and I look far better and younger than you, we’ll do it.”<br/>“What?”<br/>“I’ll turn you when you’re ancient and I am too.”<br/>“You won’t age the same way.”<br/>“I’ll turn you when you’re ready in the future. Not anytime soon.”<br/>“Baz.”<br/>“Simon. Was that the wrong thing to say?”<br/>“No.”<br/>“I don’t know what you’re thinking.”<br/>“I’m trying not to.”<br/>“What thought isn’t going away?”<br/>“I want to have your children.”<br/>He’s perfect. “I know we’re witches and you’re an orphan, but when a Mommy and a Daddy get very very drunk—“<br/>“Shut the fuck up, Baz!” But I made him giggle. <br/>“I love you.”<br/>Simon crinkles his nose the way he gets when he’s being competitive. “I love you Baz.”<br/>“I’m not gonna change my mind, Snow.”<br/>“You can.”<br/>“I won’t.”<br/>“I don’t wanna change my mind,” he says. <br/>“You’re scaring me, Snow.”<br/>“No. I… what if something happens and I lose sight of what’s important? What if I get afraid and I do something stupid and I end up losing you? What if the place we built together crashes at our feet because I’m messed up?”<br/>“You’re not messed up.”<br/>“I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving you, Baz. I don’t think I’d stop loving you if I died forever. I think we’re just… mean to be something.”<br/>“Is that right, terrible boyfriend?”<br/>“Don’t make me feel silly.”<br/>“I’m teasing, love.”<br/>I know he’s fidgeting and nodding to me.<br/>“I love you.”<br/>“I love you back, terrible boyfriend.”<br/>The silence is pretty. Snow deserves someone to pull down the sun and put it in his coffee. <br/>I love my terrible boyfriend. <br/>It’s quiet. A rocking quiet that lulls me to sleep. <br/>A shattering quiet that draws me awake. <br/>“Snow? Shit, Snow?” I’m trying to force my body to awaken enough to sound like I haven’t been asleep.  “Snow?”<br/>I swing my leg over the bed and step on Snow. “Simon.”<br/>He’s awake, too, now. He grunts at me. <br/>“Come on my bed, yeah?”<br/>He schleps on up and lays back down where my legs are crossed over one another (In times such as these, why not fancy myself the Buddha?)<br/>“Hi, Snow.”<br/>“Mmh.”<br/>“You were sleeping on the floor next to my bed, huh?”<br/>“Wanted ta be close tya.”<br/>“You could have come here.”<br/>“I didn’t wanna ya know…”<br/>“Snow, I’m not gonna hurt you.”<br/>“I know that. ‘S the problem.”<br/>“Oh?”<br/>“Shouldn’t needta be careful ‘round me allatime.”<br/>“How do we fix it?”<br/>“Dunno.”<br/>“Okay. Thanks for not leaving me. I was scared something happened. Do you wanna talk?”<br/>He shakes his head. <br/>“I’m going to sleep, again.”<br/>I close my eyes and leave my chest open. Because I read about ways to change your language and posture to seem safe rather than threatening. Fuck me, I was really afraid. I shouldn’t have been. Snow has always wandered and paced and played with water in the sink when he couldn’t sleep.  <br/>“Baz!” He’s talking softly but it hits like he’s yelling.<br/>“Yes!” I attempt to mimic his tone. <br/>He doesn’t answer me, but he does put his hand on my stomach. <br/>Fuck me. <br/>“Is this okay?” He asks.<br/>I nod. The first time Simon touched my chest I didn’t know what to do. In my mind I really could have cared less if Agatha walked up to me and asked me to feel her up (there is an over-sexualization of breasts, which quite literally assist in a child’s living and well-being). I wouldn’t, of course, but it wouldn’t make me feel anything. Trixie (the pixie) constantly put her hand on Kerris’ (not a pixie) chest without it being something inappropriate. <br/>There are parts of ourselves that we fail to consider. The skin between hips and waist. The inside side of the knee. The skin above the ankles. The very nape of my neck. The webbing in between my ring and pinky fingers. The underneath of my arm along my tricep. The bottoms of my shoulder blades. <br/>Snow’s hand rests against my chest. I want to open my eyes but I’m terrified of losing this. <br/>I would kiss him but I’m not going to. <br/>His thumb. I didn’t keep my eyes closed. <br/>“Why are you thumbs-upping me, Snow?”<br/>“Lay down.”<br/>“This soon?  Oh, but I haven’t stretched, yet.”<br/>His voice has a beautiful quality. Like a singer whose every word is a song so you know what they do that keeps them breathing. Like a warm and dying breeze in March.  “Lay down. I’m not gonna let something happen to you.”<br/>He does. I do. He doesn’t. I will. <br/>I’m looking at him like I have all the answers. <br/>And he’s looking at me like he’s standing in my boxers on the patio about to dive into a blizzard. <br/>I don’t think I want to close my eyes. I don’t think I want to have all the answers. <br/>I just want him to answer me this. <br/>His thumbprint inks along the curve of my nose, steady because I won’t wear sunglasses for a long time, even because I eat carrots or whatever. <br/>The body is built around a gloriously straight line. It isn’t symmetrical, so it isn’t evenly divided. But the line is better than any ruler, any straightedge, any level, any river. In the shower the water only falls down and it only falls down in that line. The triangle above my lips. My cupid’s bow, I think it is. My sister told me that, or my mother.  <br/>His thumb is straight over me but everything around me has turned fluid. <br/>I let my bottom lip pull until I open my mouth and my top lip and teeth guide his thumb sideways. </p><p>Simon <br/>He’s warm on the inside and I know he’ll taste like skin and nail polish. He’s barely leaned into my touch. <br/>If he would he might not be able to catch my hand shaking or my pulse in my stomach beating so steadily that the skin moves. <br/>He’s so beautiful. <br/>I’d like for him to feel his hand against my teeth and know that I can barely tell he’s there. Skimming my ear. Barely pinching my hair. Trapping my eyelashes against his pinkie. </p><p>Baz<br/>Because I know what it feels like. I know the queer energy in a room. I know the way hugging breaks the tension. I know the wonder of in your arms someone broken. I know the shaking breathing and the failed kisses because a hug is too important right then. The giggles in between early kisses the catalysts of hugs because you’re too perfect in that moment. I know the knowledge that every kiss could be the last. I know the broken hearted feeling walking away like you’re just another couple. I know the terror of looking behind you and knowing they won’t look in your direction at the same time you look in theirs. I know the fear in the middle of the night from it and I know the fear in the middle of the night without it. I know the loudest quiet that breaks your heart rather than your ears. I know the dark corners and the cold tile floors where you can see glitter that has been there for a long while. I know the smile that is the most genuine is fearful smile in the universe. I know that kissing is impossible without it being long and drawn out and their entire body where you can hold. I know the way it feels to feel someone’s chest beating out of sync with your own and hold them until they stop shaking. Holding only pinkies. Arms always swinging when you hold hands from nervous energy. Always holding some part of them. Licking their knee because it’s the covert way you can touch them while you’re in a public room and they’re next to you (Not that I’ve licked Snow from the floor while he’s on an actual chair).  It’s fucked up that you have to coerce yourself into crying, and I know that, too. <br/>I know the way every little moment is trapped into a memory box when you want it to go away. I know the smiling the second you turn your back. I know the running up the street pumping your fist in the air. I know the transient joy of three minutes when you forget you have to go home. I know the pain of being yourself. I know the looks you get when you tell something nerdy and they just smile from across the room. I love the tension that isn’t tension at all but a pull and magnetic pole too strong to even breathe without. I know how they look bathed in sunlight. I know that hug. I know how it always comes first. I know how the kiss isn’t about the mouth and how it’s about the entire body against your hips and wrists and neck. I know how everything hurts because it’s such a perfect moment. I know how it surpasses normal love every time. I know the way it hurts to hide the love of your life calmly walking away from you, and I know how much it hurts to be called their soulmate. I know how much that kiss carries and how the entire relationship is built on hugs. I know the way holding hands feels like it’s only your heart and theirs that are glued and connecting the spaces in between fingers really has nothing to do with it. I love how every second is them. I love how every second is losing against them losing them losing against the world losing your world losing their world. I love how everything queer is taking and you never own anything. Not the person not their love.<br/>I love how you can’t even own their soul because it’s too fluid to have been their own so it’s liquid and filling the container it inhabits (like yours, but for them). I like how every bit of contact is room temperature but also cold tap water that tastes like summer sips from the hose and chlorine and running to them stops time and running with them means you never run out of breath. I love how the hug feels the same as everything else with them because the world has been righted and the hurt that came before doesn’t matter.  It’s just the place where you’re supposed to be, and it’s unquestionably right. There is no thought about it. <br/>I try to keep up the lines in which he’s drawn. He’s just not built like he belongs in a suit somewhere. On the beach, maybe, laying in the sand on a cloudy day, or roller skating inside the house. He smells like skin and sweat and my nail polish and waking up from hours and hours of sleep. </p><p>Simon<br/>I like the way his tongue left my thumb all wet. The way his throat looks in the fuzzed dark now because of it. <br/>Just my thumb. Not hard. I want to wrap my legs around his until we’ve completely knotted ourselves together. I want his fingernails bent against my chest. I want his hands over mine over him.<br/>He really is the most beautiful art. <br/>I’m not gonna lift my thumb. The modern art indie albums where the entire minimalist picture is drawn from one or two strokes, a single pen lift at most (marginally unacceptable, in such a community, I’m sure). He’s facing me, so I go to his left my right. Around his collarbone; he’s trying not to move. He starts to hold his breath. His chest isn’t falling. </p><p>Baz<br/>He’s got beautiful skin. Not because he moisturizes. Not because he doesn’t smoke. Not because he wiles days indoors rather than wasting away in freckles and sunburn and banana boat. Not because he won’t walk barefoot on the beach while the sun laughs. Not because he’s ever had sixty-four ounces in a day of water. Not that he washes his hair with shampoo. Not that he washes up if he’s going to the beach the next day. <br/>He’s the antithesis of any healthy pattern. <br/>But his skin is all his. The tan from two summers ago hasn’t faded. He’s all pretty. <br/>And witty and gay. <br/>And pretty. </p><p>Simon<br/>My fingerprints are smudging over him. I can see them in my head and wrapped around his neck. <br/>He didn’t close his eyes when his tongue dipped against my thumb, not when my all slimy finger then grazed his throat. I’m too shy to look at him. I’m single-handedly (quite literally) running a borderline assault against him. <br/>“Dya want me to stop?”<br/>“I ask you to stop?”<br/>“Don’t wanna be disrespectful.”<br/>“I don’t want to be anywhere else right now.”<br/>He didn’t tell me yes or no.  <br/>Oh. <br/>He lets me trace the lines in his left palm. I can’t concentrate. <br/>Because palms are just fucking different and they are this hidden part of you that’s supposed to do everything for you and they aren’t calloused enough to do the things they do and they should burn quicker or have protective hair or something. They should cut in an instant. <br/>Palms are like the inside white rind of a watermelon. Holding a snake. The crook of his fingers leaves a groove shaped like a parachute and falling like one only to puff back up when I poke him. His nails are too long and shiny and smooth and not like mine (because the nailbeds are smaller and less oblong; the edges fan out to the very top of his skin). I trace his own fingerprints (no arches, three loops, two rings; I’ve been fingerprinted three times since I can remember). I line each one of his ribs (twelve, like twelve apostles, twelve tribes, and months in the year, twelve years of strange education, twelve years before the Mage came to reclaim me). <br/>     The place where a stripe would be on an athletic track suit. Where I would get cramps from running (just a little). Around where his belly button is (I don’t want him to feel violated, only swirled). <br/>I want him to suck on my thumb again. <br/>I do want to feel his legs against my hands, his hair neglected and his dislike of knee-length shorts to pull me in. <br/>He pulls me down to him instead. I can hear the inside skin of his bottom lip being bitten. Like a strange and inverted lip ring.  <br/>I fucking love his nose. <br/>And when he just makes me lay on his chest I like the way his nose is smushed into my right cheek so my skin is outlined around his shape. <br/>Nothing makes me higher then than his nose against my face. <br/>I can’t stop moving. The same way I can’t keep myself from running kinetic sand over my lips again and again. The pillowed perfection of barely hanging together. I just want to feel it again and again and again and again. I can feel when he smiles and tell when his breath is laughing against me. <br/>But I’ve got his chest and his hips under me and I can feel the movements of his bones misaligning with his skin. <br/>“What are you doing there, Snow?”<br/>I reach my thumb against his lips again. <br/>Which makes him giggle. <br/>“Shhhhh Bazz.”<br/>“You’re not following your own rule.”<br/>“ShdhdhUshshshdhshhhhhh.”<br/>Baz<br/>It’s all his fault that I feel like an untied shoelace. <br/>His hands are in my hair. It’s nice, and I’m glad I washed my hair after we left the catacombs. <br/>It was just strange. We got lost and I found us a way out. Snow and I both had to pee, Penelope looked like a racoon, and Shepherd was still slightly green from our rabbit encounter.<br/>Shepherd is in the room below us. Penelope is somewhere in this building, because Simon refused to have her in a different building in case something happened.<br/>His hand is in my hair while his other hand is rubbing my stomach, and it’s nice. This is nice. It’s so nice. <br/>Everything about Simon Snow feels good. <br/>He’s rubbing my thigh and it makes me lean into him more. <br/>“Thanks,” he whispers.<br/>“Hmm?”<br/>“Thanks for letting me sit on your bed.”<br/>“Of course?”<br/>“I like your body.”<br/>“Thank you?”<br/>More than anything I want to kiss him until he can’t feel his lips. <br/>He hums sounding something like a ‘yeah’ and snuggles against me. He isn’t quite on top of me anymore, and I put my arm around him so he can’t fall over the edge of the bed.<br/>“Blanket, Snow?”<br/>“Mmm.”<br/>He couldn’t be more perfect. <br/>Penny said we have to go back to the tower tomorrow. I have no idea what’ll happen. <br/>But I know he couldn’t be more perfect. <br/>He’s half asleep on my chest.</p>
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<a name="section0017"><h2>18. this is the last time simon is crazy I promise</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Simon<br/>“Sorry, Baz,” I start. <br/>“What?”<br/>He went out hunting quick (his logic was to beat being hungry, like filling the half-empty petrol tank) so he smells like body soap but didn’t wash his hair. Only the ends are darker where he washed his face. <br/>He has a skincare routine. He watches an American Youtube channel about skin and Hawaii. And another about hair.<br/>His hair flips without him brushing it, which he does twice, sometimes one hundred brush strokes on either side when Penny just vacuumed. <br/>He looks up at me in this beautiful way. If I tried to look straight up the way they do in movie posters, all you’d see is my throat and a little bit of my face. If I tried to turn to the side I’d look like a still from a whiplash incident. But he’s the reason F. Scott Fitzgerald made Nick Carroway. <br/>He’s the reason obsession exists, he’s obsession without reason. <br/>“Why sorry, Snow?”<br/>“I didn’t mean to— last night— I mean… I didn’t….”<br/>“What, Snow, you didn’t mean to fall asleep with your boyfriend?”<br/>“No, I— I mean I didn’t mean to be so—“<br/>“So what? I can hear it in your tone.”<br/>“What?”<br/>“I know for a fact you didn’t do this with Agatha.”<br/>I didn’t love her like I love you. “Do what?”<br/>“I shouldn’t have let my emotions get the best of me,” Baz mocks. <br/>I can’t even say his name right now because I know full well he’s right in a big way. <br/>But I do feel ashamed. <br/>“Don’t tell me my feelings aren’t go- okay.”<br/>“When are you gonna stop calling them feelings and start owning up to them as fears?”<br/>“What?”<br/>“When are you gonna learn to communicate that you are AFRAID. You’re AFRAID of being honest, you’re AFRAID of being yourself with me, you’re AFRAID of me changing my mind. You’re afraid of losing Bunce. You’re still afraid Ebb’s death was your fault. You’re still afraid you don’t belong here. You’re afraid that everyone will leave on purpose just like the Mage did. You’re afraid of your mentality and accepting that you have literal trauma from repeatedly trying to escape death. And you’re afraid of yourself.”<br/>He’s throwing words at me that carry the heaviness that his magic does. <br/>“You don’t get to say ‘I’m sorry I was tired’. You can’t say you were sloshed and shouldn’t talk. Tell me or don’t. You don’t get to rescind what you do and say.”<br/>===<br/>“So that’s why Baz and I aren’t talking.”<br/>“Jolly good,” Penny says merrily. “Oh, Simon, don’t cry.”<br/>“I’m not crying I’m holding my nose so I hold my breath. Everything hurts less when you hold your breath.”<br/>“Cheer up, my cherished friend. We’re going to the Tower! Nothing puts things into perspective like old feelings!”<br/>“Penny, please,” I groan. “Relent.”<br/>“Never. It’s time to go. I’ve got my ring, Basilton has his wand, and we’re gonna cast some serious Police songs and it’ll be cool. Little past us-es will show up and if he and I do it the right way any dark magic that has left a trace will saturate the room. Then we can Luminol the room with… something that I haven’t figured out yet.”<br/>“You’re reassuring yourself, not me.”<br/>“You like to know what’s coming.”<br/>“Since when?”<br/>“Since you got blindsided and when things get overwhelming you have a panic attack.”<br/>I sigh. “Baz and I planned it out last night. We’ll conduct it just like any other magickal investigation. <br/>“Where was I?”<br/>“Getting food.”<br/>“Oh.”<br/>“C’mon, Simon, I’m ready. It’ll be fun.”<br/>“But.”<br/>“But what?”<br/>“Do you think Baz is right? Why is he accusing me?”<br/>“He’s stating facts.”<br/>“So he’s right.”<br/>“In my opinion,” she starts, and I nod, “Yeah.”<br/>I don’t have anything to say to that so I tilt my head to the door. <br/>“Carry on, Simon, we’ve got work to do.”<br/>Shepherd<br/>They’re singing to The Police while vapors and sparkles recreate a scene. Simon’s hair was moppish, Baz’s was slick with blood (he accidentally shoved back his hair when he was looking at Simon). <br/>This is so bizarre. <br/>But I understand better. The way Simon looks at Baz now, empty on purpose to void anything that he felt that pulled that day. Because, really, Simon looked at Bax like he was carrying more than he ever could communicate. Only for the brief second. His realization was so brief before he yanked himself back to reality. <br/>It was so quick like he had been trying to process for days and suddenly felt when he needed to feel and it dissipated in a matter of an instance. Like it wasn’t what he was expecting. Like he couldn’t handle it but he handled it with ease and now he had to go back to the torn confused state. Like he’d take the pain because clarity was so much more than purgatory. <br/>I think the way Simon works is about pressure. He is pulled until he’s tired, and he is stripped from the armor with which others have fitted him. He holds Baz just to remind himself that Baz and he are real, under layers of snow and ice, there is body and soul. Instead of lies and words and hope and brokenness. Simon almost strips away his humanity to get to an energy. <br/>Even in pixels and dust, magicless and sobbing, it’s very clear he’s the most powerful essence in the room. <br/>Baz is just like fire. Sudden and consuming. His fangs make me uncomfortable. His smile at Simon breaks my heart afterward.<br/>They made Simon hold their hands and sing even though he insisted it didn’t matter. Well, Penelope stood in between Simon and Baz. Nothing like some morning Police pop hits washed down with some You Are My Sunshine (Baz told me on the way there that it was to shed light on where everything went next. The fucking pun.).<br/>Baz grabs Simon’s wrist away the instant that a ray of sunlight falls forward to the doorway. Penelope stands in another ray of light and commands that I stand in the third. Follow it, she told me, and we’ll reconvene. <br/>Way to send me to an early demise. I had enough of that in America, thanks. <br/>It’s the same warmth that I used to get when my mom would make me fold the sheets from the dryer and asked me by wrapping me up in one of them. <br/>So I imagine it would be a lie to say that pursuing it was unpleasant. It was warm which automatically made me feel safe. I took the spiraling stairs (because Penny wanted to try out the nose ring again) into the grass. I stopped feeling fuzzy when I got to the river. <br/>But, like, was the water cancelling the vibe? Or WAS the water the vibe. How does one determine such a thing?<br/>Kind of want to dip my feet. <br/>But kind of want to sit and look at the fish through my reflection. <br/>The sun is warm on my back and the grass isn’t prickly crabgrass the way it is at home. It’s rubbery and bright green, the way the crayon looks in pictures from little kids. <br/>And it’s not moving so so fast that it’s muddy. <br/>It’s peaceful at the river. And Penelope didn’t mistrust me. She wants my help. Or, maybe, she just needs an extra person. Probably that one. <br/>It’s a sunny day in England, which I thought wasn’t supposed to happen except for once every seven years or something. <br/>I dream about the giant rabbit when I fall asleep waiting for something to happen. <br/>Baz<br/>We’re in my car. I doubt that my family cares that I’m home. I stripped the estate of magic. And, potentially (thought I haven’t heard anything contrasting), Mordelia. <br/>He’s driving (badly).<br/>“Slow down, Snow,”<br/>“No.”<br/>“You’re twenty five above the limit.”<br/>“No.”<br/>I sigh.  “At least don’t get so close to the other cars.”<br/>“I don’t want to do that.”<br/>Snow is gonna fucking kill me today. <br/>“Do yoy know where we’re going?”<br/>“London.”<br/>“Well, yeah, we’re in London but where.”<br/>He shrugs. <br/>He’s mad. <br/>Simon<br/>It’s the vampire bar. We’re going to the vampire bar. <br/>He figured it out after a bit. <br/>“Gentleman,” the host sneers, “What can I do for you?”<br/>Baz leans against the host’s stand with enough confidence to assume that it won’t move (It’s the same wood they use in cheap podiums, that is almost like cardboard, so I’d be surprised if he didn’t end up with tan wood splinters stuck to his clothes. And he looks stunning this morning, in a mint green and deep orange striped shirt that’s horizontally striped like the prisoners, with blue jeans that aren’t too tight and a faded denim jacket he picked up in a thrift store. But it’s so big it probably belonged to a lumberjack. And he’s wearing lighter orange socks. So it shouldn’t work. You can’t even see them under his wedge laces-and-buttons almost-knee-high black shoes. But glory it works.)<br/>It’s lighter than it was last time. Probably one of those places that dims the lights every half an hour the later it gets until you can’t see quite well enough to meet someone’s eyes. I can hear the same type of conversation that would happen when we’d have make-your-own-sandwich bars on Thursdays at Watford. <br/>I need a job. <br/>Baz says he can’t picture me working a retail job or in a restaurant somewhere. When I asked him what’s left, he wasn’t sure. But he promised there’d be something perfect for me. I miss cuddling with Plant. If they were here right now we’d bump noses. <br/>“Nicodemus,” Baz offers. <br/>“What about him?” The host’s face reveals no emotions, but something about his willingness to open a conversation up seems weird. <br/>“Bring him to me.”<br/>“No.”<br/>“I’ll go to him.”<br/>“No, vampire, you will stay here. Nicodemus is dead.”<br/>“He’s— what?” I cut in. <br/>The host walks toward the back. I look to Baz but he won’t look at me. <br/>“Nic, Baz.”<br/>“What?” He’s not paying attention really. I think he thinks the guy is coming back. <br/>“Nic. The letter that just said Nic on it. That you took because you wanted to know if it was a girl, that the Mage was seeing. You picked it up from the desk. When Penny was in the office.”<br/>“Nic,” he repeats dreamily. <br/>“Baz,” I pull his shirtsleeve, “Nicodemus.”<br/>“Snow, I don’t remember that.”<br/>“I do.”<br/>“You also—” He stops. <br/>I’m kinda glad he did. <br/>“Baz, I know it happened.”<br/>“But—“<br/>“Why don’t you know?”<br/>“It doesn’t matter!”<br/>“It does.” I walk away from him. Not because I don’t want to have the conversation (I know I’m right). I do want to get away from there, though. <br/>“Were I the one who touched it, I imagine I’d remember it…”<br/>He trails off.<br/>“Baz?”<br/>“It’s spelled.”<br/>I don’t know what he means. <br/>“It’s spelled.  The person who touches it doesn’t remember.”<br/>“Where is it?”<br/>“I don’t know what I did with it. Did I act differently? What did I do with it after I picked it up?”<br/>“You picked it up before we were ‘sposed to leave. I thought you’d tell me if it was interesting. You take too long to open letters.”<br/>“Ripping a beautiful envelope is a grievous sin. Someone’s hands intended for it to settle neatly and be presented in a grand way.”<br/>“Well where’s it?”<br/>“I didn’t want to open it.”<br/>“So where is it now?”<br/>“I don’t know.”<br/>“Well, try.”<br/>“Come out, come out, wherever you are! Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony! Olly olly oxenfree! Open Sesame?”<br/>“Did it work?”<br/>“Fuck me, Snow, I have no idea.  We’ll give it time.”<br/>I thought maybe he’d like to sit and talk, but he sits in the driver’s seat while I wait outside the car. I feel better being outside in the sun. And the sun is lovely in the same way a lullaby is today. <br/>Nothing happens.<br/>I get in the car and turn on the radio. Kevin Abstract is up on Baz’s playlist. <br/>Normally he’d sing along. <br/>I fall asleep in the sun and wake up because Baz is a few centimeters from my nose with his face.<br/>“Boundary?”<br/>“What?” I don’t think he thought I was gonna wake up. His fangs are popped and that makes me wiggle around in my seat. There are cows to my left outside the window, one peacefully flaunting a wreath of flowers and roaming with the others.<br/>“Boundaries.”<br/>“You were talking in your sleep.”<br/>“Mmh.”<br/>“Snow, it wasn’t like you usually do.”<br/>“Great.”<br/>“Did you dream?”<br/>“I’m sleepy, Baz.”<br/>“Did you dream, Snow?”<br/>“No.” I’m frustrated and discouraged now. <br/>“You were talking about Nicodemus.”<br/>“So what?”<br/>Baz looks sad. “Nicodemus made a deal with the Mage. In return for his strength and extra abilities for turning, the Mage wouldn’t hurt Ebb. Because she was too powerful, and the Mage knew that. Nicodemus made him swear and seal the pact on his magic and his life.”<br/>“What the fuck does it matter?”<br/>“Snow,” he says. He pinches my chin in his middle finger and his thumb. I can’t decide if I want to run from him or I want to jump him.  “The Humdrum stole the magic in the room. It absorbed your magic, and when Davy died, it absorbed his. And you didn’t kill Davy. He broke the pact with his hitman and he died.”<br/>“I don’t believe you.”<br/>“Okay even if you didn’t kill him look at it like this: he was destined to die.”<br/>“But I have to live my entire life knowing he isn’t alive.”<br/>“And that’ll never go away,” Baz cedes. <br/>“Exactly.” I turn my head away from him to watch the cows. <br/>“Fine,” Baz snaps.<br/>I don’t understand again. <br/>He’s stalking out of the car and I’m half expecting for the cows, stiff and tense, to be drawn into the air and start spinning around him.<br/>“Baz?”<br/>I’ve got to scramble to get him when he doesn’t answer.<br/>Through the grass as it gets longer around the outskirts of the land that must belong to the cows, or whoever owns them, or the place where someone leads them to graze. <br/>“Baz!”<br/>“No, Snow, I need a minute.”<br/>“I’m supposed to need those!” I wasn’t trying to be snarky but saying that makes me feel an awful lot better. <br/>“Shut up, Snow! Just stop!” He whirls. “Please. Just stop miscommunicating and not communicating and searching and being something that’s just… alien. Stop treating yourself like you’re an infectious virus. And stop fucking blaming yourself with consequences or misery for the fate of someone. It was his fate to die. It was his fate to stop hurting people. It was meant to happen.  And I know you carry his blood on your hands, but you can’t say that your hair is red because you have blood on it. Wash it. Remember what happened. Dream about it if you aren’t ready to stop feeling it. You don’t have to stop feeling it. But you have to stop wearing it like a letter. It isn’t a letter. It’s another thing that happened to you. There has to be a point where you figure out what you want, and you be the person you want to be. When did you even like yourself, Snow? Did you ever?”<br/>“Yeah.”<br/>He stares wildly into my boringly blue eyes.  He knows they’re boring. He told me so.  “You gonna elaborate?”<br/>“I… I miss the world where I didn’t have to force my way through. Didn’t have to fight. Because I’m not. I’m not born to fight. I was born to meet what comes to me and knock it out of the neighborhood, but I wasn’t born the way I am lately. I’m not born bitter and volatile and angry. I’m not born emotionless and brokenly volatile and afraid. I miss that quiet moment with you, being lulled to sleep. Their hand in my hair. I miss you reading fairytales to me. The feeling like the luckiest boy alive. I miss laughing with my friends. I miss the absence of self loathing. I miss the quiet pride and overwhelming joy in who I am. I miss being a soft boy and a quiet boy. I miss being gentle and obvious and the person I know I can be again. I miss him because he’s been forced into the trenches and someone is pointing an AK at him and I really want him to get better.” The words don’t fall smoothly.  I’m upset so I’m stuttering, and I’m overwhelmed so I repeat all the beginnings of sentences. <br/>Baz sits down in the grass and looks so sadly at me. “Well, I guess you don’t need me.”<br/>“I told you that isn’t right already.”<br/>“But I can’t fix it.”<br/>“I can’t fix me either.”<br/>“So that’s it, Snow?”<br/>“What?”<br/>“I suppose I’m breaking up with you.”<br/>I have to hold his hair when he says that. “No,” I insist. <br/>“But why can’t we get past this?”<br/>And then he starts to cry, gracefully, mind you. Just keeps me against him.<br/>In that moment I can feel his heartbeat.<br/>“You’re not a screwup, Simon.  You’re just a part of fate. Sometimes you just have to play the villain. You belong here, and you belong with me, and I don’t want to lose you. I just want you to wake up every day and tell me what you told me. What you want. Because you’re still you. You’ve just got some… ivy growing over it.”<br/>“Baz—“<br/>“Hush.  We’ll list things you aren’t sorry for every day. We’ll make time to talk if there’s something you need to say. We’ll talk every week we’ll have talk time. While I have peppermint tea and you have iced tea like a weirdo.”<br/>“You really want me to make a list of fears and guilt in the form of ‘I’m not sorry or afraid’?”<br/>“Yes.”<br/>“And you wanna listen?”<br/>“Yeah. Because the things you told me are all things you are. You’ve got to remind yourself that you aren’t in danger anymore. I’m not gonna let something happen to you.” <br/>“A year ago all it took for me was one word too many, one sharp look, youd shut up and close your eyes and we’d sing a stupid song about cooperation.”<br/>“Yeah.  Is it okay that I’m holding you?”<br/>“You’re not gonna break up with me?”<br/>“No, I’m not going to leave you.”<br/>“It’s kind of okay. I feel okay right now.”<br/>“Make a list for me.”<br/>“Of what?”<br/>“Of things you’re not sorry for or afraid of.”<br/>“Now?”<br/>He squeezes me. <br/>“I’m not—“<br/>“No you’ve gotta say your name first.”<br/>“Why?”<br/>“Because I like when you say your name.”<br/>“Ugh.  My name is Simon Snow.  I’m not sorry that the Mage died and he was fated to die and it was my fault but he was gonna die anyway so I basically euthanized him from a vampiric death.”<br/>Baz lifts an eyebrow. “You’re a stubborn bastard.”<br/>“Shh. I’m making my list.  I’m not sorry that I’m struggling. I’m not sorry that I’m afraid I should have stopped Ebb’s death. I’m not sorry that I’d go back and do most of it differently…. I… I’m not sorry that I love Baz. I’m not sorry that I love Penelope. I’m not sorry that I got caught in a situation where I wasn’t taught what just love was. I’m not sorry I keep blaming myself.”<br/>“I’m not mad at you, Snow, you know. For being yourself and afraid. I just get frustrated that what I say doesn’t seem to be enough.”<br/>“It helps more than you know.”<br/>“Yeah?”<br/>“Every time you argue with me, I’m arguing back with what someone else told me or taught me. So every time I say something that I grew up thinking, and you tell me, it helps, because someone I trust is saying something to validate my perception.”<br/>“Ah.”<br/>“But I’m sorry you have to do that and reassure me and be my therapist.”<br/>“It doesn’t bother me.”<br/>“You can tell me if it does.”<br/>“Have I ever kept anything from you?” I open my mouth.  “Aside from hiding my raging homosexuality.” I want to say vampire.  “And, vampire doesn’t count. Because you would have told the Mage.”<br/>“Why do you hafta say that?” I groan. “See, I wasn’t myself. I was being a person fighting for a cause I don’t believe in.”<br/>“But you were you, you were Simon Snow, always trying to do the right thing and endlessly fucking curious. What you were taught was the right thing wasn’t, though, and that’s alright. Because when you learned what was, you fought for that new cause and understanding.”<br/>“Fuck you.”<br/>“Hey!”<br/>“I just hate that you’re so right.”<br/>“I’m always right.”<br/>“No you’re not.”<br/>“Am.”<br/>“You thought I was straight.”<br/>“Ah, but maybe, Snow, I convinced myself that the right thing would be to assume you were straight to hide my affections, and therefore diverted my feelings into an impossibility.”<br/>“Because you don’t like when things aren’t fixable.”<br/>“Yes, and that wasn’t something I could control, so it wasn’t something I tried to think about.”<br/>“So you aren’t always right.”<br/>“MY POINT, Snow, is that sometimes knowledge doesn’t match truth, but actions usually match personality.”<br/>I make him say it again, more slowly.<br/>“I’m sorry all our conversations are so…”<br/>“Circular?”<br/>“How do you mean?”<br/>“Like, going back to the same topics.”<br/>“I guess, yeah.”<br/>“Don’t be sorry for being yourself.”<br/>“But.”<br/>“I’m Simon Snow,” Baz starts.<br/>“I’m Simon Snow, and I’m not sorry that I torture my boyfriend by talking about my obsessive anxiety.”<br/>“Jolly good.”<br/>He hasn’t let me go. <br/>“Baz?”<br/>“Yes, cor meum?”<br/>“Can I kiss you?”<br/>“If you’d like.”<br/>“Would you?”<br/>He closes his eyes. “I love your lips, Simon. I love kissing you.”<br/>“Yeah?”<br/>“Duh. But only when you’re comfortable.”<br/>“Please.”<br/>“Yeah?”<br/>“Yeah…”<br/>Baz<br/>If kisses could tear souls from bodies, I think my potentially soulless form died an intense death in an instant.</p>
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<a name="section0018"><h2>19. Chapter 19</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Two things: Simon and Baz are based in my own experiences and my dreams for them. Nothing else. <br/>And secondly, why is my former partner following me?? They broke up with me?? I fail to see the need????? They won’t call me by my name anymore, either. But I helped pick theirs??????????? Send gay help??????//??/////?</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Please don’t hold this against me.”<br/>Merlin and Morgana; I sound like fifth year Snow. <br/>He shakes his curls against the bridge of my nose.  “I’m not losing you.”<br/>“I’m not going anywhere. Let me in to stay, Snow.”<br/>He doesn’t dissent, just squeezes my fingers between his palm. <br/>“You didn’t answer my question.”<br/>Snow nods. “You’re always the one who doesn’t wanna talk about feelings anyway. Y’always don’t want me to ask so many questions.”<br/>“The dictionary doesn’t have enough words to answer your questions, Snow.”<br/>A smile is airbrushed on his lips. <br/>He hugs me to him for a second. <br/>The thing about us is that we’re so human we defy our own understanding. The brain invented logic, but it is a self-evolving device and it goes against and beyond its own understanding. <br/>And, really, it shouldn’t be possible to feel this way. <br/>I don’t date Snow for an ego boost or for fun. Snow isn’t fun. He pulls me into myself and he comes with me. There is no freeing feeling from who I am. It isn’t the thing I feel compelled to do because I want to be the gay vampire with a Mage boyfriend. And if I were lonely I’d get a turtle. It isn’t a spiritual experience of losing myself. <br/>It simply is. It is every second I spend with him falling more in love with him. Constant reassurance we aren’t broken or breaking one moment at a time. <br/>And his lips. Those, too. <br/>Simon<br/>He’s only the second person I’ve ever kissed. <br/>Agatha has twelve men lined up. Which doesn’t bother me. Because there is this song on Penelope’s (and my) playlist that says “I can’t wait til I see your face and my brain thinks that it’s looking at a stranger”. I really am not looking at her anymore, not as mine. Not as someone who wanted to stay. Not as someone who loved me no matter what. Not as someone who wanted to show me truth and love. Because in the end she didn’t. She asked for me, hers, for always and then bolted while I was breaking. She chose to ignore me and not let me near when she should have. <br/>I really am looking at a stranger. I feel nothing for her. <br/>I do feel hurt. Not because she is with someone else. Not for any reason but the fact that I can’t be normal. I’m never going to get that slow dance without fear. That first date. That last date. That public kiss that doesn’t feel like I’m in a football field at night with all the floodlights (that going to pride as a teenager). The uni acceptance celebration. The uni decision that’s my own. Not my ghosts haunting me and crippling me into a corner. Staying with her family with comfort and ease after school. Staying with my family. Having dinner with my family. Holding hands in public without feeling broken and guilty. Like she’s staying with me because she has to, because her feelings for me are inconvenient. I won’t get it. Ever. No dances like that, dates, pride. <br/>None. <br/>It kills sometimes. I’m still young. (Teenagers in love shit.) <br/>I can’t go back anymore. <br/>That’s so wrong. <br/>That will hurt— for an hour. <br/>Over it. It affects me no longer. More than anything, she deserves normality, which is what she craves. She deserves video chatting and summer dates and text in between shifts and good things. <br/>The hurt of being myself just hasn’t yet faded.<br/>Knowing Baz is away from me hurts every time. <br/>There was that moment in his room where he was exhausted and getting a migraine, and I lay on his shoulder. Where he had his door closed (We weren’t allowed to do that when I was bouncing through orphanages. You know, in case, I, got, like, someone pregnant, gave the child up for adoption, and became untraceable in the system and put another child in the system that they won’t let anyone but a straight cisgender couple adopt and then blame everyone else for not wanting to adopt a child.).  His shades were half closed and the sun was fading in and out. Only his sister (Mordelia) was home. She didn’t care that I was around. She was playing with her puppy (eleganty, of course).<br/>I was so safe and untouchable. Like, ‘Baz so I could and would conquer the world’. Like the way that we read each other’s minds and he’ll say something and it’ll be the perfectly exact same picture I have in mine. The way I don’t feel compelled to say something. The way I feel like he won’t hurt. The way he smiles awkwardly when I scrunch his chin. The way he tries NOT to react when I thumb his shoulders and the way he focuses on the wall if I push my fingers into his scalp. <br/>I’ll keep my eyes open to watch him. <br/>He’s the most beautiful boy. <br/>I just love him. <br/>“Si.”<br/>Simon. Si. I’ve died. <br/>I don’t miss the way Agatha would stare at me across the dining hall during breakfast with her wounded mysterious look. That never even made sense to me. Penny tried to explain it. That she was part of “our” breakup, too, and that she was allowed to hurt. But if you did something to hurt someone else, and you knew it would hurt you, why not find a better way to fix it?  If you were in control, why choose to wreck everything and act like it isn’t because you ripped the sky from where it was?<br/>Then there’s Baz. Baz doesn’t make me feel like that.  I can’t even focus on time with Baz. Baz steals time and the sky with every breath he takes in. Nothing is even physical anymore. <br/>All I can feel is Baz. <br/>Because everything else is nothing compared to this.<br/>Baz<br/>Because nothing else can ever be compared to this. <br/>“Baz?”<br/>“What?”<br/>“I can’t stop thinking about Agatha.” That came out wrong. <br/>“What?” All twisted. <br/>“She is nothing like you— like this. You’re everything.” Sappy and sticky. <br/>I feel like I’m drowning. <br/>Simon<br/>When I wake up again we’re close to Watford, and I don’t think I’ve let go of Baz’s hand.<br/>My head feels funny when I try to figure out what’s going on with us. It doesn’t make sense to me…. not that it’s bad. <br/>For a while, all I could see when I looked at her was how much of a bounder I was (I wasn’t, though.  I’m still not?). Then his lips, and the way I could coax him to silence and how all I wanted to do was lose myself in everything he isn’t. And, a while after that, the way he reassured me at his Leavers’ Ball. <br/>But then… I could only see myself. A blinding fury of what was wrong with me, fucking up everything more. Then I try to talk and I screw things up more. Baz says something mean, but it’s true. I say something mean, and it’s only that. <br/>I want to give Baz everything, and me nothing, and I’m giving him my everything, but I’m nothing to give. <br/>I loop his fingers loosely enough so that I can kiss his knuckles. <br/>“It’s okay, Snow.”<br/>“I’m tired.” <br/>“I know, love. Must be hard to be you.”<br/>“Shove off.” I wack our threaded hands against his shoulder. <br/>He’s terrible and perfect and I could stay fluid with him forever. <br/>Baz <br/>Snow fell asleep on the car ride back. <br/>The Mage made a pact with Nicodemus. And then Snow got possessed, which I’m not going to tell him until I’m able to align everything that happened to him with a bulleted list in the textbook on magical transitions and control. <br/>He seems to have transitioned from torn apart by anxiety to a sedated state of acceptance. (What cracked? I’ve not the slightest fucking notion.) <br/>It’s going to haunt him, quietly, always. <br/>I don’t find him quite as tortured about it. <br/>My terrible boyfriend, back to not thinking ever. <br/>I’ll be the one who overthinks in the relationship, again.<br/>If I closed my eyes again (I’d get into a car wreck) I’d feel Simon on my skin. <br/>Simon’s palms crawling against my throat and pinching my jaw. <br/>He grabbed my wrists so I fell against him. He pulled my hands and his both under his shirt. <br/>He kissed me until I met his eyes (practically dry-crying, hopelessly, ready to be murdered if he was so inclined) just for him to kiss my nose. <br/>He tugged me under him and pinned me and all I could think was some kids’ show song that goes like “safety and dreams lalalalallalalalala oh ooh la “(I probably should have felt trapped or endangered or something. Who needs cortisol? Not the gays.).  It was like being kissed by sleep when you’re dead on your feet. Like laying on sunburned sand as it washes around you in the breeze. This man is fucking enchanting. <br/>Because he spent a part of the car ride scrubbing his lips against my knuckles giggling because he couldn’t feel them past tingling. <br/>Penelope<br/>I’m back from home. Where Mum smacked me, Dad awarded me two of his most detailed maps, and then Mum had tea with me while she fiddled in the kitchen (far from her forte) for something to give to Simon so he wouldn’t dissolve. Something magickal. She doesn’t think Simon is magic, anymore, but she thinks he was always some sort of vessel  “to bridge the gap of humanity and nature with industrialist, slightly corporate greed”.</p>
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